Jack of Spades

by Diane Capri

  There was every reason to go now because he had the break in his school schedule and he wanted to get away. If he was going to find the man, now was the best time. Perhaps the only time he’d have a chance of making it happen.

  Sure, driving would be better in the spring, but he felt a sense of urgency and there was no reason not to go now. After college, with his dad sick, Jake had decided to take time off. But all of his good buddies had jobs or went straight to graduate school. None of his friends had the free time to tag along on an open-ended trip like this.

  Flying was fine, but he wouldn’t get to see much of the country that way. And he didn’t want to spend his savings on a rental car in California when he had a perfectly good vehicle.

  Their arguments had lasted well into the night for several nights. He hadn’t persuaded her, but eventually she’d stopped objecting. He’d packed up his Jeep and pointed its nose toward the street. He would be on the road before dawn tomorrow.

  While he ate, his mother pushed her food around on her plate. She cocked her head and looked him in the eye. “After you find him, then what?”

  Jake shrugged and said nothing because that was the one question for which he had no answer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Friday, February 25

  7:30 a.m.

  Detroit, Michigan

  FBI Special Agent Kim Otto rushed to make the plane at Detroit Metro Airport and took her seat on the aisle in first class. Flying was never her first choice. Not that the Boss ever gave her a choice. He’d called long before sunrise and delivered her orders. Same as always.

  She’d roused John Lawton, her favorite Treasury agent, from a deep sleep.

  “Where are you going?” he mumbled when she slipped from beneath the toasty covers into the cold morning.

  “Laconia, New Hampshire. I’ll call when I can. Lock the door on your way out. I’ll tell the doorman you’ll be leaving so he doesn’t come in and shoot you.” She grinned, but he wasn’t looking.

  “You could give me a key and all of this would be a lot easier,” he mumbled into his pillow.

  She didn’t reply. Her relationship with John was too new for exchanging keys. But that wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have now.

  The trip from her apartment and the flight itself were uneventful. When the pilot announced initial descent, Kim said a quick prayer. Now all the pilot had to do was land safely. She crossed her fingers.

  High above Laconia, she looked out of the window to see rolling hills, barren trees, and a lot of snow. Exactly the kind of landscape she’d expected after her internet research. She’d never enjoyed the snow or the cold and she got plenty of that at home in Detroit. She would not have volunteered to travel to New Hampshire in February.

  But she got lucky, for once. The northeast was experiencing a brief winter thaw. Snow still covered everything, of course. But yesterday, the temperature in Laconia was forty degrees, barely cold enough to need a coat. She planned to spend as little time as possible and then get the hell out before the frigid weather returned.

  The municipal airport came into view. The runway was clear and the plane landed without mishap.

  “So far, so good,” she muttered under her breath as she pried her fingers from the armrests, popped another antacid to calm her rebellious stomach, collected her bags, and deplaned.

  She bundled up and made her way downstairs to the exit. The first thing she noticed was a blast of cold air. The second thing was a familiar black SUV waiting at the curb. The driver, a huge black man she recognized, lowered the window. He smiled at her, revealing an envious mouth full of bright white teeth.

  “Right on time, Otto,” FBI Special Agent Reggie Smithers said. His deep voice was as smooth as silk, just as she remembered.

  Smithers was assigned to the New York field office. They had worked together last month on a case there. He had proved to be reliable and competent and she liked him. He was also intimidating as hell, which could come in handy.

  Now that Gaspar had retired, she didn’t know when she’d get her new partner or who he would be. If he was auditioning, Smithers would have her vote. She could do a lot worse.

  “I’m having déjà vu.” She smiled because she was genuinely glad to see him. “Didn’t we just do this?”

  “Feels like it, doesn’t it?” He grinned, waving her toward the right side of the vehicle.

  She walked around the front of the SUV, stowed her bags in the back, and climbed into the passenger seat. He waited patiently without comment for her to get settled and then he slipped the transmission into drive and rolled into traffic.

  “Thanks for picking me up. I wasn’t expecting you,” she said. “Did you get transferred to Boston?”

  “Temporarily. They needed some extra help. I volunteered for taxi duty when I heard you were coming. Give us a chance to talk.”

  “Something specific you wanted to talk about?”

  Smithers nodded. “Is Reacher somehow involved in this thing?”

  When they had worked together in New York, Kim’s assignment was to complete a background check on Jack Reacher for the Special Personnel Task Force. Reacher was being considered for a classified assignment.

  Recently, her assignment had been modified. Not only was she researching Reacher’s background, she was looking for the man himself. The Boss would not have sent her here unless he believed the trip would lead her to Reacher. Eventually.

  But she was also working under the radar. Which meant she couldn’t share everything with Smithers or anyone else. And Smithers had once worked for Lamont Finlay and Gaspar never liked that connection. Which made her somewhat wary of him, too. So she sidestepped the question.

  “I never know for sure why I’m sent anywhere. But I’d say it’s a safe bet that Reacher’s at the center of something around here,” she replied before she changed the subject. “I saw the photos of the motel. What happened?”

  Smithers let the Reacher matter drop for now. “We’re not exactly sure. We’re still working on the crime scene. It looks like multiple explosions followed by a fire. There were several vehicles out there and all of them seemed to have had full gas tanks.”

  “Must’ve been quite a sight when all of that went up in flames. Noisy as hell, too.”

  Otto had read the reports, thin as they were.

  Laconia, New Hampshire, was a frigid place. Nighttime temperatures in February were single digits. An average of sixty-four inches of snow fell in the winter. Which was about four times the national average. Later in the winter, the snow might have easily piled five inches above Kim’s head.

  As it was, the total accumulation had been forty-one inches so far this year, but about twelve inches of snow had melted rapidly during the thaw over the past few days. When the snow melted, it revealed what was left of a motel, outbuildings, and several vehicles. All had burned in what must have been a white-hot fire, leaving nothing but charred remains and ashes.

  The aerial photographs she’d seen in the files could have been printed in black and white since they were completely devoid of color. They showed a snow-covered clearing in the dense woods. Presumably there was a road that led to the clearing, but if so, it had not been plowed at the time the photos were shot. She saw no indication that any humans had been near the area recently, either.

  She shook her head. “And nobody saw or heard anything at the time all this went down? Nobody found the destruction after all these months? How is that even possible?”

  “Only thing we can figure is this place is pretty isolated. No neighbors close by. Hardly any road traffic. The motel had been abandoned years ago, we were told. So who would come out there? If it hadn’t been for that kid taking pictures with his drone, might have been years before we discovered any of it.” Smithers gave her a meaningful side eye. “Not that finding the place earlier would’ve made a difference, you know?”

  “Yeah. I guess that makes sense,” Kim replied. She tugged the seat belt which pulled uncomfortably
against her neck. She repositioned her alligator clamp at the retractor to increase the slack in the belt for a while.

  Smithers navigated the big SUV easily along the narrow backroads deeper into a forested area. The leafless trees closed in, making it dark for the middle of the day. The SUV’s headlights had come on automatically, which helped a bit.

  The roads had been plowed since the kid’s drone photos were taken, probably by law enforcement agencies seeking access to the crime scene. There were no other signs of human life in the area now that Otto could see.

  She looked out of the windows at the landscape beneath the denuded trees. Patches of leaves were visible here and there on the ground where the snow had melted. She saw no homes. No shops. No people. No traffic moving in either direction.

  “Where are we going, exactly?” she asked.

  “About twenty miles from Laconia, give or take. Almost there.” Smithers slowed the big vehicle to a crawl as they approached the mouth of a narrow road up ahead on the left. The snow had been plowed aside to create an even narrower lane barely wide enough for the SUV.

  “How did you ever find this place?” Kim asked.

  “Bloodhounds,” he replied with a grin as he turned carefully into the lane.

  Snow was piled high on each side of the lane, almost like a tunnel. The trees were so thick that the roads would be dark even at high noon when the trees were fully leafed in the summer. As it was, Kim found herself straining to distinguish objects from shadows.

  He moved the transmission into four-wheel drive and slowed his speed further. His eyes looked straight ahead and both hands grasped the steering wheel.

  “Nine bodies, right?” she asked.

  “So far. Could be more. We haven’t finished yet,” Smithers replied.

  “Cause of death?”

  “Impossible to say right off.” He shook his head. “They’ve been out here awhile. Some of them were pretty chewed up by animals. There’s a lot of decomposition. There are some gunshot wounds, but other injuries, too. The coroner hasn’t finished the autopsies yet.”

  Otto closed her eyes and kneaded the ache between her eyebrows. “No positive IDs on any of them?”

  Smithers gave her a quick glance. “You’re thinking one of the bodies we found might be Reacher?”

  Kim shrugged but did not reply.

  The truth was she knew Reacher hadn’t died here months ago because she had encountered him several times since then. In New York, D.C., Mexico, and other places. Indeed, Reacher had saved her life in Palm Beach just last month. She was sure of it.

  No, Reacher wasn’t dead. But he must have been in Laconia at some point. Otherwise, the Boss wouldn’t have sent her here, she assumed.

  “You saw the photos. Everything at the motel was burned to cinders. No way to find any fingerprints. But there’s still a lot of forensics to process and we’re fighting the approaching weather.” Smithers paused, thinking for a moment. “You got a sample of Reacher’s DNA for comparison? We’ll get DNA analysis from the bodies soon. If you have a definitive sample, we can rule Reacher in or out.”

  Kim shook her head. “No DNA, so far. Reacher left the army before DNA was mandatory and we haven’t found any other personal effects that we could get his DNA from.”

  “Okay. What about dental records? Take us a little longer, but we’ll have those, too.” Smithers said.

  “Could work,” she replied. “The only dental records we have are old. From Reacher’s army days. But they are distinctive.”

  “What do you mean? Distinctive how?”

  They’d traveled the narrow lane for more than two miles. Aside from one small patch where the trees did not block the sky for maybe twenty yards, they’d moved in near darkness. The eerie kind of darkness that made you want to talk to another human.

  “Reacher grew up on army bases around the world. He had his teeth fixed wherever he was living. Some of the dental work is American, some of it isn’t.” She paused for breath as the SUV bounced over a snow-packed pothole. “The point is, we should be able to confirm whether one of the bodies you found is Reacher or not by those dental records.”

  “I’ll get the forensics guys on it.” Smithers said as he slowed for the last turn. “What’s left of the motel is around this next curve.”

  When the SUV cleared the trees, the weak daylight revealed the scene Kim had viewed in the aerial photos. Maybe a couple of acres of flat, snow-covered land with protruding blackened objects.

  Straight ahead were the remains of three substantial wooden buildings. They had been laid out in a wide right-hand arc, maybe fifty yards from the first to the last. The buildings might have been painted once. Now there was very little left but the foundations, which were charred cinderblock.

  The first and largest building must have been the motel. It might have contained a dozen rooms. Certainly no more.

  The second building looked like it could have been some kind of barn. It was shorter and deeper than the first building and it had a concrete ramp leading to an open maw, probably a door once upon a time.

  The third building looked like the foundation of a regular house. Maybe the motel owner lived there with his family. Or maybe it was another storage building of some kind. Impossible to surmise from the ashes.

  As if they had been randomly scattered by a giant’s hand, the burned-out husks of several vehicles protruded from the snow. Kim counted the charred frames of six ATVs. Quad bikes. Before they burned, each had four wheels, which probably made them perfect for traveling over the property. They couldn’t get too deep in the forest, though. They’d get stuck between the trees.

  The other charred remains were cars, SUVs and what had once been a tow truck, which was curious. What had they needed a tow truck for?

  Near the entrance to the clearing, four intact official vehicles were parked together. Teams of personnel were painstakingly gathering evidence like archaeologists at a site of ancient ruins. Smithers pulled in beside them.

  “Have you identified the owners of any of the burned vehicles yet?” Kim asked.

  Smithers shook his head. “The ATVs are all the same make and model and they appear to have been the same age. Working theory is they were purchased all at the same time and from the same place. They have a seventeen digit vehicle identification number etched on the frames. But it looks like they were never registered to the buyer and didn’t have plates.”

  “Can the manufacturer identify who bought them?” she asked.

  “Not yet. Like I said, we’ve got a lot of forensics to sort through once we get everything collected. There doesn’t seem to be any urgency here aside from the weather.” Smithers paused and swept his arm in a wide arc indicating the entire scene. “This whole thing seems to have happened more than a year ago, according to our analysis so far. Nobody’s been around asking any questions. We’ve got plenty of time. We can afford to do things right. No rush. Come on. I’ll show you around.”

  He shut the engine down and stepped out. Kim followed.

  She plunged her gloved hands into her overcoat and stomped her boots to gin up some body heat. It was forty-four degrees outside, which was warmer than normal for February in New Hampshire, but certainly not balmy.

  “What about the other vehicles?” She walked toward the main building and he fell into step beside her.

  “All rentals. Curiously, all reported stolen at one point or another.”

  “And the tow truck? That couldn’t have been a rental.”

  “Actually, we traced it back to a local guy. No family. No coworkers. No friends, apparently. Or at least no one friendly enough to report him missing.”

  “You figure he’s one of your bodies?” Kim asked.

  Smithers shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  “Who owns this place?”

  “An outfit called Northern Holdings. Shell corporation registered in Panama. The registered agent is one of those corporate outfits located in Concord. Says the business was done online and p
aid for with a company credit card. Never met anyone face-to-face.”

  Otto nodded, turned her collar up and hunched down into her coat. She pointed to what looked like a metal cage around one of the rooms near the end of the first building. “What’s that?”

  “We don’t know,” Smithers replied.

  Otto felt the wind cutting through her like an icy knife some crazed maniac stored in the freezer. She didn’t want to come back out here tomorrow when the weather could be even worse. The forecast was for temperatures above freezing for a couple of days, but she trusted weather forecasts even less than airline flight schedules. Both could turn in an instant.

  She said, “I’d like to take a quick walk around before we lose the daylight.”

  “Let’s start with the easy stuff,” Smithers suggested, leading the way along a well-trodden path of packed snow toward what remained of the last building’s foundation.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Friday, February 25

  6:07 a.m.

  Laconia, New Hampshire

  Jake opened one eye and peered at the digital clock. He grinned. Precisely seven minutes past six, as expected. He awakened again at six-twenty-one and the clock confirmed the exact time. He tossed the covers aside and yawned on his way to the shower.

  While he was getting dressed, his mother had made breakfast, packed a few sandwiches, and poured a large pot of strong black coffee into a thermos for him. He’d had no choice but to eat the breakfast, which meant he got off to a much later start than he’d planned.

  “You won’t find a place to get food or good coffee for miles, Jake,” she said as she poked Dad’s thermos under his arm on his way out the door.