Jack of Spades

by Diane Capri

  Kim opened her mouth to ask about the distant cousin. Maybe she could track down some actual relatives of Jack Reacher if she had the right starting place. Reacher could be living with them. Maybe that’s how he’d stayed off the grid all these years.

  But before she got the words out, Old Man Reacher’s face went slack on the left side. His eyes widened and he turned his head in an odd way, as if he suddenly had trouble seeing her.

  “Mr. Reacher? Are you okay?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth but the sounds that came out were garbled noises, not words.

  “Can you raise your arms?” she asked. He tried, but nothing happened.

  Smithers lifted the phone on his chairside table from the receiver and dialed 9-1-1. “We need an ambulance. Quickly. Mr. Reacher is having a stroke.”

  He stayed on the phone until the dispatcher’s questions were answered while Kim checked Reacher’s pulse and tried to calm him, but the throbbing pace she felt in his jugular was much too rapid.

  “You stay here with him. Paramedics are on the way. I’ll go to the door to meet the ambulance and let Myrna know what’s happened,” Smithers said while striding across the room.

  “Help is on the way, Mr. Reacher,” Kim said quietly.

  Whether he heard her or not, she couldn’t tell.

  He closed his eyes and rested his head against the chair but his heartbeat never slowed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Saturday, February 26

  3:55 p.m.

  Laconia, New Hampshire

  Owen came out of the farmhouse as Trevor landed and retrieved the drone. The wind had picked up and navigating the drone back had proved more difficult than expected. The battery’s charge was almost gone. There would be enough juice left to download the video, but no more.

  Trevor tilted his head toward the house. “Took you a while in there. Did you find McCoy?”

  “Yeah. He must’ve spent every penny I gave him on booze. He’s passed out in one of the back rooms. I thought he was dead at first, but he’s just sleeping it off.” Owen said, buttoning his jacket against the cold. “I searched the house, just in case he’d had a friend over to party or something. Didn’t find anything. Guy’s a real hermit.”

  Trevor nodded. “Get my laptop bag out of the SUV. I want to look at this video on a bigger screen than my phone.”

  He carried the drone inside while Owen did as he was told. Trevor was set up on the kitchen table by the time Owen brought the bag. Trevor connected the cables and transferred the video first. Then he played it.

  The whole video was too long to study carefully on the laptop screen sitting in the cold in this shithole. So he adjusted the video to the section where he’d seen the bear. He zoomed in on the images. The video wasn’t as sharp as he’d like at this magnification, but the black moving thing was definitely a black bear on the prowl.

  The two lumps on the ground that had been uncovered by the wind were less clear. As the bear came closer to them, the proportions definitely suggested they were big enough to be humans. But they could have been two bears or even a couple of moose.

  Whatever the two lumps were, they were definitely dead. Predators had probably been feeding on them for a while. The footage of the bear’s dinner was particularly gruesome.

  Trevor hit the pause button and pointed to the lumps. “Does that look like humans to you?”

  Owen squinted, as if that would make the images clearer. “Can’t tell. But given where they are located and the other bodies the FBI found at the motel site, I’d say it’s more likely more human victims than a couple more dead bears. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  Owen said, “Could be Lange. We’ll probably need DNA to be sure, after all this time. That bear is not likely to be the only kleptoparasite using those two as a smorgasbord.”

  “Right.” Trevor had a strong stomach for violence. And he was mad as hell at his business partner. But his gut twisted when he thought about Lange out there exposed for almost two years to scavenging animals. Whatever was left of him wouldn’t be recognizable, even to his own mother.

  “It’s not likely the bears killed them,” Owen said. “Black bears don’t usually attack humans and the bodies are too close together. Bears might have killed both, but these two were probably killed at the same time, the way the bodies are positioned. Only one apex predator kills like that. Humans.”

  “Right.” Trevor nodded. “We need a closer view. The only way to get in there is on snowmobiles, which we don’t have. The FBI will be packing up soon. It’ll be too dark to work out there and the weather is coming in faster than expected.”

  Owen replied, “We can try to get closer. Take another look with the drone. Then go out there after the FBI leaves.”

  Trevor considered the logistics. Flying the drone directly overhead at the motel from the farmhouse again was a big risk. If luck was against him, as it often was, FBI personnel might see it and investigate. Much safer if he flew this particular drone over the area after the FBI was already gone.

  But the blizzard would cover those two lumps in the snow long before midnight. Later might literally be too late for the drone to capture anything helpful on video. And he wanted to get a lot closer to those two bodies anyway. He couldn’t get DNA from photos. Which meant he’d need to rent a couple of snowmobiles and get them towed out there.

  “When is the FBI packing up?” Trevor asked.

  “My contacts at the local cop shop say they’ll leave tonight. Like you said, the blizzard is getting worse and they won’t be able to get back out there tomorrow,” Owen said. He stuffed his hands in his pockets for warmth. “They’ve collected a lot of forensics already. There’s no rush to sweep up the rest because all the evidence is already old. Chances are they’ll be coming back at some point regardless of how much they can get done.”

  “Okay. Let me think about logistics,” Trevor said. “Take the drone out to the SUV and put a new battery in it. I’m right behind you. I want to look at this footage one more time.”

  Owen grabbed up the drone and left by the back door.

  When he was safely out of range, Trevor closed the laptop and slipped it into the bag. He reached into his pocket and located his gun and silencer. He walked deeper into the house, following a stench strong enough to gag a maggot until he found McCoy, still sawing logs on the floor in one of the back rooms like Owen said.

  The man was a mess. Long, stringy gray hair. A gray beard as unkempt as the rest of him. Looked like he hadn’t eaten a solid meal in weeks. He reeked of body odor and a dozen other noxious stinks.

  McCoy had outlived his usefulness. Both to Trevor and to society.

  Trevor stood at an angle where the least amount of body parts would spatter back. He shot four rounds into McCoy’s head and watched it burst apart like a melon thrown against a brick wall.

  Trevor nodded, satisfied with the result. He didn’t need to dispose of McCoy. He broke the windows to release the scent and left the door open on his way out.

  Bears had a notoriously keen sense of smell. They could locate food from several miles away. The odors emitting from McCoy’s bloody body would attract predators of all sorts.

  Problem solved.

  When Trevor emerged from the house, Owen sat behind the wheel and Oscar was in the back seat of the SUV. If they had heard the gun shots inside, they gave no indication. Trevor put his laptop case in the back and returned to the front passenger seat.

  “We’re done here for now,” he said. “Head back to Manchester. I need to make some calls.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Saturday, February 26

  4:05 p.m.

  Laconia, New Hampshire

  Smithers left the door to the study open. Kim saw Myrna wheel her walker away from the front door when Smithers admitted the paramedics into the house. Smithers said, “He’s in his room. First door on the right.”

  They loaded Reacher onto a stretcher and placed him in the am
bulance quickly while Myrna watched from the doorway. Kim stood near her to be sure she didn’t faint or something. Smithers followed behind the stretcher and closed the front door after the paramedics left.

  “Would you like us to drive you to the hospital, Myrna?” Kim followed along with the old woman as she wheeled herself into the foyer once again.

  “No, dear. That’s not necessary. I’d only be in the way right now,” she replied. “If it’s like the last time, he’ll be back in a few hours anyway.”

  Kim’s limited medical experience suggested Reacher’s stroke seemed more serious than a minor TIA. Strokes were unpredictable, but he would probably require more than a few hours at the hospital. Maybe more than a few days, even. Actually, he might never make it home this time, but there was no reason to say any of that to Myrna.

  “Do you have someone who can come to stay with you while he’s gone?” Kim asked.

  “I’ll call a couple of the neighbors. Don’t worry. We were taking care of ourselves long before you got here, dear,” Myrna smiled kindly to take the sting out of her words.

  “Of course,” Kim replied, although she was uneasy about leaving the frail woman alone in the house. When Old Man Reacher was there with her, at least one of them could call nine-one-one if the need arose. Now Myrna didn’t have that backup. “Are you sure one of the neighbors will get here soon?”

  “Lonnie next door always brings our dinner anyway. Like meals on wheels, but the neighbors take turns cooking for us and the food’s a lot better. Lonnie delivers. She’ll be here by five o’clock. Every day. Never fails.” Myrna explained in her breathy voice. She smiled, but not wide enough to show her gold tooth. “Really, there’s no need to worry. You go ahead. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than watch me rest until he gets back.”

  “All right. If you’re sure. But here’s my card. You call me if you need anything at all,” Kim said, placing her card in the old woman’s hands. “We’ll let ourselves out. Can you lock up behind us?”

  Myrna gave her a fierce look.

  Smithers laughed, which lightened the tension. He gave Myrna’s shoulder a final gentle squeeze. “I’m sure Myrna is capable of locking the door, Agent Otto. Come on. Let’s leave her in peace.”

  “You take good care, Myrna.” Kim zipped her parka and pulled her gloves on. She turned up her collar and went outside.

  “Thank you both. I’ll be sure to call you if I need to,” Myrna said, just before Smithers closed the front door behind them.

  They stood on the porch until they heard the deadbolt slide into place behind them.

  They walked down the sidewalk to the SUV and climbed inside. Smithers started the engine to get some heat moving. But he didn’t immediately pull away from the curb.

  “Are you going to San Diego tonight? Look for Jake?” he asked while he cinched up his seatbelt.

  Kim placed the alligator clamp she kept in her pocket at the seatbelt retractor and loosened it enough to rest comfortably across her slight frame. “Most likely.”

  “How about you wait until tomorrow and I’ll come along?”

  She arched her eyebrows. “Why?”

  “Because I can’t go tonight and that call I got earlier was good news. We found the owner of the Honda. The car was bought off a used car lot in Canada a long time ago by a guy named Shorty Fleck. He was a potato farmer in Saint Leonard, New Brunswick. Now he owns a windsurfing shop in San Diego.”

  “Just because a Canadian bought the Honda, that doesn’t mean he drove it to that Laconia motel on the way to San Diego. It could have been stolen. Or resold. Or a thousand other things,” she said as Gaspar’s phone vibrated in her pocket.

  “It’s worth following up the connection,” Smithers said while she located the vibrating burner phone. “There’s at least three people now connected to San Diego who have a connection to Laconia, maybe around the time that motel burned. Which makes it worth my time to go out there instead of handing off the interview to the San Diego field office.”

  “Hang on,” she said as she fished the burner out of her coat and left the SUV to take the call. She walked a few feet away from the Reacher house in an effort to confound electronic eavesdroppers before she answered. “Find anything?”

  Gaspar said, “Yeah. I’ve uploaded several files to your server. But it’s just as you thought. Margaret Preston Reacher submitted three DNA samples to one of the consumer ancestry databases twelve years ago. Samples were hers, Jake’s, and David’s.”

  “Interesting,” Kim replied. She wondered whether David had known about the testing at the time. “And?”

  “And David Reacher was not Jake Reacher’s biological father,” Gaspar said.

  “Meaning that there must have been some question about Jake’s bio-dad even back then. Otherwise, she wouldn’t bother to have the DNA tested. But when Jake was ten, that question was at least partially settled by the test results,” Kim said slowly, thinking aloud. “What about Joe Reacher’s DNA? Find anything there?”

  “Sorry, Suzie Wong,” Gaspar said. “Struck out, I’m afraid. No DNA samples to test. When Joe’s autopsy was done fifteen years ago, his brother made a positive ID. Along with Joe’s unusual dental work and fingerprints, that was enough to confirm the identification at the time.”

  Kim nodded, although he couldn’t see her.

  No fault to find with the Margrave P.D.’s procedures during Joe’s autopsy back then. Like his brother, Joe had grown up on military bases around the world. Some of his dentistry had been done by American dentists, but the rest was no doubt a hodgepodge of techniques and materials. No one else could have had teeth exactly like his. Dental records would have proved his identity as positively as DNA. Add the fingerprints on file, and every agency in the world would have stopped there.

  “Any of Joe’s autopsy samples still around? Blood, tissues, clothes, anything? Can we get DNA from those samples now and compare it to Jake’s?” Kim asked, stomping her feet trying to stay warm.

  The wind slapped her face hard enough to redden her cheeks, cause a redder nose, and watery eyes, too. She looked longingly at the warm SUV and noticed the snow was accumulating faster than she’d expected. She made a mental note to check the weather report.

  “I’m working on acquiring samples of Joe’s DNA,” Gaspar said from his no doubt sunny, warm, Miami office. “Now that I’m no longer with the FBI, some things are easier. Like hacking into private DNA registries. But getting physical evidence from a fifteen-year-old autopsy performed by an official medical examiner following a homicide is trickier. You’d probably have better luck asking The Boss.”

  She paused briefly before she replied, “You’ve been retired less than a month and you’ve already forgotten how impossible that idea is?”

  She could ask The Boss. But of course, she wouldn’t. Gaspar knew that.

  Everything she learned about anything related to her assignment now was conveyed to The Boss on a strictly need-to-know basis. To put it bluntly, she didn’t trust the bastard and with good reason. He’d hung her out to dry too many times.

  How could she get the samples?

  Smithers could do it, but it would take a while and he wasn’t technically on her team, either. He’d report anything and everything up the chain of command unless she asked him not to—and explained her reasons. Which she hadn’t done so far and preferred not to.

  But the problem of acquiring the autopsy samples for testing was real. For starters, the samples had been collected back in Margrave, Georgia, where Joe Reacher was killed in the line of duty. The actual samples might have been destroyed or discarded in the past fifteen years. Or they could be stored somewhere under less than optimal conditions, which would make them useless even if she did find them. Or a thousand other possibilities, most of them problematic.

  Kim knew only two people besides The Boss who could help acquire what she needed. Gaspar was one, but he’d already hit a brick wall. The other one would be both willing and able. Lamo
nt Finlay, Ph.D. Now Special Assistant to the President.

  He’d been selected by the highest-ranking civilian responsible for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and placed one heartbeat away from the U.S. Commander in Chief. Fifteen years ago, when Joe Reacher was killed, Finlay had been the top cop in Margrave.

  “Don’t do it,” Gaspar said.

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t ask Finlay.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know how your mind works, Otto. You could try getting new DNA from Jack Reacher’s maybe baby, Jacqueline. But the mother doesn’t want that whole thing stirred up again. She’s been through enough. Leave her alone.”

  “I wasn’t even thinking along those lines, Chico,” Kim said. “You’ve lost your mind reading abilities.”

  “Not quite.” Gaspar took a deep breath as if he needed fortification for the second point. “Asking Finlay is a spectacularly bad idea. You’ve got to have figured that out by now.”

  Kim said nothing. Lamont Finlay was always her ace in the hole. She called on him when she was backed into a no-win situation. So far, he’d always come through for her.

  Gaspar believed Finlay’s motives were as twisted as whatever motivated the Boss, and he was probably right. They despised each other, for sure. So far, Kim had benefited from their feud, whatever its source.

  Not that it mattered.

  By the time she asked Finlay for help, she’d already eliminated every other possibility anyway. Finlay was her last resort. When there’s only one choice, it’s the right choice, as her mother often said.

  Kim and Gaspar had argued about Finlay many times already. There was nothing new to say on that score, so she moved on.

  “Anything else, Chico? I’m freezing my ass off out here.” She’d been walking up and down the sidewalk in an effort to gin up enough body heat, but it was a losing battle. The wind gusts were strong enough to blow her over when coupled with her forward momentum. And when she turned to walk into the wind, it was a slow slog. The rapidly accumulating snow compounded her problems.