The Reacher Experiment

by Jude Hardin

  “That’s next on the list. First I need to talk to Collins. My appointment’s at nine o’clock, so we need to get going.”

  They left the hotel, made it over to Dwyer Road a little before nine. The police station looked like something a kid had put together with blocks. Some of the big concrete cubes had been painted a color that might have looked good on a 1956 Ford or the walls of a nursery when you knew it was going to be a boy. Allison parked the car in the visitors’ lot and waited there while Wahlman climbed out and headed toward the front entrance. He was a little nervous about the meeting, because it was possible that the security videos from the area around the sandwich shop had been circulated already, possible that the desk sergeant would activate some kind of alarm as soon as he walked in the door.

  But that didn’t happen.

  “Can I help you?” the sergeant asked.

  “I have an appointment with Detective Collins,” Wahlman said. “I’m a little early.”

  “I’ll see if he’s in yet.”

  The sergeant lifted the receiver from a phone base with a bunch of buttons on it, punched in a four-digit number and notified whoever answered that Mr. Rock Wahlman was out in the waiting area. A couple of seconds later, he hung up and instructed Wahlman to push on the solid metal door to his right when the buzzer sounded. Wahlman did that, and then he followed the uniformed officer waiting on the other side down a long hallway to a door that said HOMICIDE.

  “You can go on in,” the officer said. “Detective Collins is in the first office on your left.”

  “Thanks.”

  Wahlman pushed the door open and entered the common area of the office suite. There was a young lady sitting at a desk with a computer and a phone and a little sign that said Tori Moore, Administrative Assistant. Short brown hair, civilian business attire, stylish eyewear. She didn’t look up from the work she was doing when Wahlman walked in. Probably accustomed to the door opening and closing every five minutes. Probably so accustomed to it that she completely tuned it out most of the time.

  Wahlman looked around. There was a copy machine and some bookshelves and a long table with a chrome coffeemaker the size of a beer keg on it. Collins was over there filling a ceramic mug that looked like it had been dredged out of the Mississippi.

  “Want some coffee?” he asked.

  “Does the percolator get washed any more often than the cups?”

  Collins laughed. “I brought this in the day I got my gold shield,” he said. “These layers of grunge represent nine years of hard work and untold gallons of Hills Brothers.”

  “You never clean it?”

  “Never. And everyone around here knows not to touch it. Help yourself if you want some coffee. It’s not bad, especially this time of morning. It starts to get pretty stout after lunch.”

  Wahlman had been around lawmen long enough to know that many of them developed peculiar little habits along the way. Brown socks on Friday. Whatever. Everyone knew that these idiosyncrasies were supposed to keep bad things from happening, although nobody ever actually said that out loud. You go thousands of days without washing your coffee mug, and you go thousands of days without ending up in the emergency room or the morgue. You know that it’s totally irrational to think that there’s a correlation between this thing and that thing, but you continue the behavior anyway. Just in case.

  Wahlman grabbed a paper cup from a stack on the table. He filled it and took a sip and followed Collins into his office. There was a small wooden desk with a computer and some pictures on it and a steel file cabinet and a corkboard and some chairs, everything crammed into a space about the size of a station wagon.

  Wahlman took a seat in one of the wooden chairs in front of the desk, Collins in the padded vinyl one behind it. The desk and both of the wooden chairs had been coated with the same shade of blue that had been used on the exterior of the building. Wahlman figured the paint must have been on sale, or maybe even free.

  He took another sip of the coffee.

  “This is good,” he said.

  Collins nodded. “You might need something a little stronger when you hear what I’m going to tell you,” he said. “First of all, our divers didn’t find a knife or any other kind of weapon down there in the canal.”

  “I knew they wouldn’t,” Wahlman said. “The assault must have taken place a mile or two before the truck went off the highway. No reason for the killer to leave the weapon behind.”

  “Right. So now I’m wondering how the assailant managed to get out of the truck while it was still moving. It had to have been going sixty or seventy miles an hour. Maybe even faster than that.”

  “The bridge over Lake Pontchartrain,” Wahlman said. “You could jump out of the passenger side of the truck, land in the water and then swim ashore.”

  “Sure,” Collins said. “If you’re in a James Bond movie or something. That shit doesn’t happen in real life.”

  “Depends on how desperate you are to get away. I cuffed a sailor to a drainpipe one time while I chased his friend down a fire escape. Two bricks of heroin on the kitchen table. They were breaking it up and weighing it and spooning it into smaller bags for distribution. The guy cuffed to the pipe cut his own hand off with a broken beer bottle. Never did find him or the dope.”

  “What about the friend?”

  “He’s doing twenty in Leavenworth. Hard to say which one of them got the worst end of the deal.”

  “I guess we could check the lake,” Collins said. “But I really don’t think that’s how it happened. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that we identified the victim. What was the name of the orphanage you grew up in?”

  “Fine Place West. A misnomer if there ever was one. It was in the western part of Tennessee, so I guess that part made sense. They shut it down a few years ago. What’s the vic’s name?”

  “Darrell Renfro. He also spent some time in an orphanage, but not that one. He was in a place in Illinois for a while, but apparently he was adopted when he was six.”

  “What was his name before he was adopted?”

  “I don’t know. The person I talked to said his records were archived years ago. We’ll probably have to get a court order if we want to pursue that angle any further. Anyway, you and Renfro look almost exactly alike, and you were both orphans, and your name came up as a possible match when we ran his fingerprints.”

  “So that’s it,” Wahlman said. “He’s my twin brother.”

  “Different date of birth, so I don’t think he’s your twin. But it certainly would appear that the two of you are related. We’ll have to run a DNA test to know for sure.”

  “It blows my mind that we were both on the same stretch of highway the other night, and that I was the one who ended up trying to rescue him. It’s either the most bizarre coincidence in history, or someone—”

  “Set it up,” Collins said, finishing Wahlman’s thought for him. “And believe it or not, we discovered something even stranger than all that. We got a second possible match on the prints.”

  “A second possible match?”

  “Guy named Jack Reacher.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “I did a little research,” Collins said. “He was an officer in the army. Special Investigations. Served thirteen years. Apparently he was involved in some questionable activities after he got out.”

  “What kind of questionable activities?”

  “Some vigilante stuff. I haven’t read through everything, but it seems that for quite a few years he had a habit of showing up in places where trouble was brewing.”

  Wahlman looked down at his own fingertips, thinking about the day he was sworn in at the United States Armed Forces Processing Station in Memphis, the day his prints were added to the FBI database.

  “So I might have two brothers,” he said.

  “No. Reacher was born in nineteen-sixty.”

  “So he’s—”

  “Yeah. A long time ago.”

  “And he was related to Renfr
o and me?”

  “I don’t know. The only thing we can say for sure right now is that the three of you have similar fingerprints. Not identical, but similar enough for the computer to flag them as possible matches. Which is rare. I’ve been in law enforcement quite a few years, and I’ve never seen that happen. Fingerprints are usually unique enough for the computer to distinguish one family member from another, even with identical twins.”

  Wahlman nodded. “Now that you mention it, I remember reading about that one time. Something about various environmental factors in the womb affecting the grooves and ridges. So how is it even possible that Renfro and Reacher and I have prints that are so close to being the same?”

  “I don’t have an answer for that,” Collins said. “I’m just as baffled as you are. We have an expert coming from Baton Rouge to take a look, but it’s probably going to be tomorrow before she can make it down here. In the meantime, I have some paperwork I need you to fill out. And a nurse is supposed to stop by in a little while and swab your cheeks for the DNA test.”

  11

  It was almost noon by the time Wahlman made it back out to the parking lot. Allison was sitting there with the windows open, doing some more work on the crossword puzzle she’d started earlier.

  “You’re not finished with that thing yet?” Wahlman said.

  “I took a short nap.”

  “Must be nice. I had to wait for a nurse to come and jam some cotton-tipped sticks into my mouth. She drew some blood, too.”

  Wahlman showed her the square of gauze taped to the inside of his left elbow.

  “You poor thing,” Allison said. “Did she at least give you a lollipop?”

  “It was a he,” Wahlman said. “And no he didn’t. Which is pretty infuriating, now that you mention it. This is the last time I’ll ever come here for DNA testing.”

  Allison laughed. Wahlman filled her in on everything he’d learned from talking to Detective Collins.

  “Sounds to me like you’ve found your great-great-grandfather,” she said, referring to the man named Jack Reacher.

  “Sounds to me like a glitch in the computer system,” Wahlman said. “There’s no way the three of us really have such similar fingerprints. It just doesn’t happen.”

  “Can’t the police examine them the old fashioned way? With a magnifying glass or whatever?”

  “They’ve called in an expert. So we’ll see what happens. Right now I need to find out who killed Darrell Renfro and put Walter Babineaux in the hospital. I need to do it before the police find the video of me running away from the sandwich shop, and I need to do it before the same people try to kill me. Again.”

  Allison started the car, rolled the windows up, switched the air conditioner on.

  “Want to go back to the hotel?” she asked.

  “I need a gun. Any idea where I can get one?”

  “Why would I have an idea about that?”

  “Just asking.”

  “You think I’m some kind of criminal, don’t you?”

  “Actually, I don’t know anything about you,” Wahlman said. “Which doesn’t seem quite fair, since you know so much about me.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know why you need ten thousand dollars by Wednesday.”

  Allison stared through the windshield. The sunlight reflecting off the dashboard made her eyes glow aquamarine.

  “Ask me about something else,” she said. “Anything else. I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Do you know where I can get a gun?”

  Allison sighed. “I know a place,” she said. “But I don’t want to go there.”

  “Because it’s the same people you owe money to?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can park a block away and stay in the car,” Wahlman said. “I’ll go in by myself.”

  “Can’t we wait until tomorrow? That way I can go ahead and pay them and be done with it.”

  “I need a gun today. I want to go to my room at the hotel and fish the business card with Clifford T. Drake’s cell phone number on it out of the trash can. The man pretending to be Clifford T. Drake, that is.”

  “Fake Drake,” Allison said.

  “Right. I need a gun in case the guys he sent to kill me are watching the room.”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t read the number on the back of that card. I thought you said the ink bled.”

  “It did. But your comment about a magnifying glass gave me an idea. Maybe the pen left enough of an indentation for me to make out the number.”

  Allison put the car in gear.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said.

  She steered out of the police station parking lot, got back on the interstate and took the Pontchartrain Expressway across the river. A few minutes later she exited on Belle Chase Highway, following signs that said NAVAL AIR STATION, NEW ORLEANS.

  “We’re going to the base?” Wahlman asked.

  “We’re going to an ice cream store in a strip mall. It’s not far from NAS.”

  “I met some guys from one of the squadrons there when I was stationed in Spain. VP Ninety-Four, I think. They were on deployment. They kept telling me I should pick New Orleans for my next duty station.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “I made it my first choice. But the navy doesn’t always give you your first choice. They sent me to San Diego.”

  “I’ve heard it’s nice out there,” Allison said.

  She turned down a residential street, pulled over to the curb, gave Wahlman directions to the ice cream place. She told him what to say when he got there, and how much money he would need for the purchase. He took three crisp one hundred dollar bills out of his wallet and folded them into one of his back pockets, climbed out of the car and started walking.

  The strip mall was about half a mile from where Allison had parked. It was a warm day and Wahlman had worked up a sweat by the time he got there. Hardware, pharmacy, auto parts, grocery. Two vacant storefronts, and then a narrow one in the corner with a pink and white striped awning and a sign that said DENA JO’S OLD FASHIONED ICE CREAM.

  Business was not booming. Only one vehicle in the designated parking lot, no customers at the tables.

  A bell jingled as Wahlman pushed his way through the door and stepped up to the counter. A slender young man wearing a spotless white shirt and a paper hat asked him how he was doing.

  “Fine,” Wahlman said. “How about you?”

  “Great. What can I get for you today?”

  “One scoop of almond-raspberry in a cup,” Wahlman said.

  “Sorry, sir. We’re all out of that flavor.”

  “You don’t have any in the back?”

  The man gestured toward a door that said EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  “See for yourself,” he said.

  Wahlman opened the door and walked into a room lined with steel storage shelves. It was freezing in there. Literally. Giant cardboard containers had been placed in rows on the shelves, each tubular box labeled with the flavor of ice cream that was inside it. Wahlman counted nineteen different varieties, none of which were almond-raspberry. There was an insulated suit hanging on a hook in the corner. It looked like something you might see on an arctic explorer. Or an astronaut.

  Wahlman waited.

  And waited.

  A digital thermometer hanging from one of the shelves said that it was minus five degrees Fahrenheit in there. Wahlman’s teeth were chattering and his fingertips were turning blue. He was about to retreat back to the front of the store when a door on the other side of the room swung open and a man wearing a black leather jacket and a ski mask walked in carrying a briefcase.

  “Show me the cash,” the man said.

  Wahlman pulled the money out of his back pocket and handed it to the man, who smelled strongly of tobacco. The man set the briefcase on the floor, and then he turned around and left the room without saying another word.

  Wahlman picked up the br
iefcase and exited the freezer, nodding to the man in the paper hat as he jingled through the door and made his way out to a very welcome change in temperature.

  12

  Wahlman didn’t open the briefcase until he was back in the car with Allison.

  The .38 revolver had cost double what it was worth, but that was the price you paid for convenience.

  For not having to wait a week for the paperwork to go through.

  “Now all I need are some shells,” Wahlman said, spinning the cylinder and viewing the unimpeded daylight beaming through all six of the chambers.

  “You’re kidding,” Allison said. “They didn’t put any bullets in the gun?”

  Before Wahlman could respond, someone started tapping on the window on Allison’s side. Someone with an enormously large belly and a baseball bat.

  “Start the car,” Wahlman said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  But Allison didn’t start the car. She rolled the window down and asked the man standing there what he wanted.

  “What do you think I want?” the man said. “I want my money.”

  “It’s not due until tomorrow,” Allison said.

  The man stepped to the front of the car and smashed the driver side headlight with the baseball bat. He pounded the front fender on that side a couple of times, and then he waddled back over to the window and looked at his watch.

  “Tomorrow starts at midnight,” he shouted. “About ten hours from now. What difference is ten hours going to make? Either you have the money, or you don’t. And since you obviously don’t—”

  Wahlman climbed out and slammed the door. He walked around to the driver side and inspected the broken headlight and the dents in the fender, told Allison to roll her window up and lock the doors. He was downwind from the man with the bat, and he could smell the odor coming off of his body—a putrid mixture of whiskey and rotting fish guts.

  There was a silver SUV with tinted windows parked about twenty feet behind Allison’s car. It was the single vehicle that had been parked in the lot at the ice cream place. Wahlman had seen it drive by him a couple of times after he left. At first he was concerned that it might be the people who were trying to kill him. Now he knew it was Tanner. The loan shark. Apparently Tanner had followed him after the transaction at Dena Jo’s, maybe suspicious because he was on foot. Maybe suspicious that he was a cop or something. Selling any kind of firearm without a license was a serious offense. Hence the coded language and the long wait in the walk-in freezer. No telling what kind of shady business went on in there. Money laundering came to mind. Maybe some crystal meth packed in with the mint chocolate chip.