Jack of Spades

by Diane Capri

  He waited a full minute before he raised his finger to the bell again. He heard the chimes inside and waited for footsteps. Another full minute passed before his expectation was rewarded.

  Through the glass panel in the door he saw a middle-aged woman drying her hands on an apron walking toward him. He stepped back.

  She turned the dead bolt and pulled the heavy wooden door into the house. She had a smudge of flour on her nose. Margaret Reacher. She looked a little older than the photo he’d received from his source, but it was definitely her.

  He smiled. This was a neighborhood where housewives felt comfortable opening doors to strangers.

  “Can I help you?” she said, as if he might need something she could provide.

  He grabbed the handle on the storm door and pulled it toward him. There were no barriers between them now and he could easily have pushed his way inside. But he wanted her cooperation first. He had just enough time to try to get the answers he came for the easy way.

  “Mrs. Reacher?” he asked in the way of door-to-door solicitors everywhere. He extended his hand as if he might be a friend of a friend. “I’m Adam Prince. I knew your husband. May I come in?”

  She cocked her head and frowned with uncertainty. The combination of cold air blowing through the open door, his friendly smile, and mentioning her husband seemed to override her natural reticence. She stepped aside and he walked into the living room.

  “It’s warmer back in the kitchen,” she said, after she’d closed the heavy door solidly behind him. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “That would be great,” he said as he followed her down the narrow hallway toward the kitchen.

  Once they were seated at the kitchen table, he folded his hands and leaned forward. In a tone filled with mock sympathy, he said, “I recently heard about David’s death. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, lowering her eyes for a moment.

  He continued talking in an effort to avoid her tears. “I didn’t know David very well. But I worked with his brother, Mark, in Europe.”

  She nodded but made no reply.

  “In fact, it’s Mark I’m looking for. I was hoping you might be able to tell me where he is.”

  She shook her head slowly. Her eyes were glassy, but she wasn’t crying. “I would help you if I could, Mr. Prince. I’ve never actually met Mark and I have no idea where he is.”

  Trevor ignored her objections. “Mark has something that belongs to me and I need to get it back. I have reason to believe that he left it here when he came for his brother’s funeral last month.”

  Her eyes rounded and she shook her head. “I don’t know what Mark told you, but he didn’t come for David’s funeral. He certainly didn’t leave anything here.”

  Trevor stood and put a bit of steel into his tone. “Then I’m sure you won’t mind me having a look around for my property.”

  Margaret’s shoulders squared and her head snapped back to look up into his eyes. “I most certainly do mind. There’s nothing here that belongs to you. Please leave my house before I call the police.”

  “That would be a serious mistake, Mrs. Reacher.” Trevor narrowed his gaze and sneered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small cellphone. He pressed a single button. “I need your assistance. Both of you.”

  “Copy that,” Owen replied.

  Trevor waited.

  Margaret wrung her hands and her face became more agitated. She pushed her chair back to stand, preparing to call the police using the cordless phone in a stand on the countertop across the room near the sink.

  Trevor swiped a heavy boot behind her ankle and pulled hard, yanking her foot off the floor. The move was swift and sure.

  “Oh!” Margaret cried out, as her full weight plopped down hard onto the chair.

  Trevor heard the front door open and close as Owen and Oscar came into the house. “Don’t get up,” he said, pressing down on her shoulder to emphasize the point as he strode past her into the living room.

  “Search the house,” Trevor instructed Owen.

  “What are we looking for?” Owen asked.

  “The black and brown leather duffel bag. And anything else that might be useful,” Trevor replied.

  Owen nodded. He sent Oscar down to the basement as he peeled off to search the other rooms in the house.

  Trevor returned to the kitchen. “Where’s the kid?”

  “What kid?” Margaret replied.

  Trevor slapped her twice. A quick slap on one cheek with his open palm and the second a quick backhand on the other cheek. Not too hard. He wasn’t interested in sending her to the hospital. He only wanted her to understand he was serious.

  Tears sprang to her eyes and rolled to her chin and she reached up to hold both cheeks in her hands. “You mean Jake? H-he’s not a kid anymore.”

  Trevor narrowed his gaze. “Where is he?”

  “I-I don’t know,” she said, sniffling a bit. She reached into her apron pocket for a tissue to dry her tears and blow her nose.

  When she’d finished, Trevor slapped her again. Twice more. A little harder this time. His fingers left a vivid red mark on each cheek.

  She gasped and tears sprang up, but she didn’t cry out this time. She was tougher than she looked.

  “Where is Jake, Mrs. Reacher? I’m going to find him whether you tell me or not. Save yourself some grief and tell me while you still can.” Trevor heard Owen opening and closing drawers and closets in the bedrooms. Oscar’s activities in the basement were quieter.

  “He left on a driving trip. I haven’t talked to him since he left. I don’t know where he is,” she said.

  Trevor’s patience snapped. He grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm back and up. “I could snap your arm, Mrs. Reacher. Right now.”

  He gave her arm a little jerk to emphasize his point. She wailed with pain.

  “Where is your son going?”

  Her breath came and went in short gasps of pain. “California.”

  “Where in California?”

  “San Diego, I think. He wasn’t sure when he left here.”

  “Where’s your cell phone?” Trevor asked, giving her arm another jerk.

  She nodded her head toward the end of the counter. His eyes scanned in that direction. He saw keys, gloves, a handbag. He dropped her arm. She gasped as the pain stopped and used her other hand to rub the spot briskly.

  Trevor opened her bag and dumped the contents on the counter. He swiped through the pens and tissues and old receipts and linty breath mints until he located the old flip-style phone. He flipped it open.

  No missed calls, no messages. He pushed the button for recent calls. Nothing from the kid.

  Briefly, he considered taking the phone, but he didn’t. Tracking her calls seemed like a more productive use.

  He scrolled through the contact list until he found Jake Reacher’s number and committed it to memory. He called one of his burners from her phone to be sure he had the correct number for her. He’d dump the burner somewhere here in town.

  Then he dropped her phone into the pile of crap he’d emptied out of her purse just as Oscar came up from the basement empty handed.

  “Check the garage and meet us out front,” Trevor ordered. Oscar nodded and left through the back door. Trevor watched him trudge to the detached garage, around to the side entrance, and go inside.

  Mrs. Reacher was still sniveling and rubbing her sore arm when he turned his attention back to her. Owen stepped into the kitchen and shook his head. Trevor tilted his head toward the front of the house and Owen left.

  Trevor waited until he heard the front door close. He saw Oscar leave the garage and plow through the snow toward the street.

  Trevor pulled his gun from his pocket and held it where she could see it. He tilted his head as if he might be thinking about what to do next.

  “Can I trust you, Mrs. Reacher?”

  She nodded her head vigorously. “I’ve never met Mark Reache
r. I swear I don’t know him at all. If he ever calls me, I won’t say anything to him.”

  Trevor nodded, still holding the gun. “What about your son? Can I trust you not to tell Jake? It seems like you’ve been calling him a lot. He’ll call back eventually. Be easier for me if you never answered the phone.”

  “Don’t kill me. Please,” Mrs. Reacher begged, crying quietly now. “I won’t tell anyone you were here. I won’t call the police. You haven’t really done anything and they wouldn’t try to find you, anyway.”

  “I can easily come back here and finish what I started,” Trevor mused as if he was thinking and she couldn’t hear him.

  “That won’t be necessary. I promise,” she said, barely coherent now as she continued to cry and beg.

  He let her babble on for a bit before he adjusted his grip on the gun. He swung and hit her on the temple with the butt of his handgun. A satisfyingly hard whack that reverberated up his arm.

  She stopped talking immediately. She fell sideways off the chair and landed on the kitchen floor.

  He looked down at her for a few moments. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. Her sobs had stopped.

  She was probably unconscious and not dead. He could check her pulse to be sure. But he didn’t.

  He shrugged and returned his gun to his pocket. He walked through the back door and out to the garage. Inside, he found a relatively new sedan. He stooped to attach the tracking device and returned to the kitchen.

  He locked the back door, checked to be sure the stove and oven were not on, and flipped the lights off in the kitchen.

  He reversed his path from the kitchen through the hallway to the front room. Along the way, he grabbed one of the framed photos of Jake and his parents off the wall. He turned the lights off. When he reached the front door, he set the lock to snap into place, and closed the door behind him.

  He found a fresh burner cell phone in his pocket and placed a call to a number he’d memorized long ago. “Yeah, I need a twenty-four hour trap on three phone numbers.” He rattled off Margaret Reacher’s home and cell numbers, and finished with Jake Reacher’s cell phone.

  “Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment.” He disconnected the call. He walked to the SUV and climbed inside. “The cash isn’t here.”

  Owen replied, “If Lange is dead, the money could have burned up in the fire. Otherwise, I’m guessing the kid took it with him. We need to find the kid.”

  Trevor nodded. “There’s one more place to look first.”

  He supplied driving directions.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sunday, February 27

  9:35 a.m.

  Laconia, New Hampshire

  Trevor waited in front of the three-story brick townhome until a neighbor collected the old lady for church. She would be gone a couple of hours, which was more time than he needed. He worked his way around to the back, unlocked the door, and slipped inside.

  The house was oppressively warm and humid inside. Old people were always cold, he remembered.

  He found the old man in a large room that doubled as a study and a bedroom close to the front entrance. Trevor knocked once lightly and entered the room without waiting for an invitation.

  The room was even warmer and more humid than the rest of the house. A gas fire burned in the fireplace. The old man had nodded off. His chin rested on his chest and he snored gently.

  Since he was sleeping, Trevor was free to search the room. There was only one closet large enough to hold the black and tan duffel containing his money, and it wasn’t there. Trevor hurried through the rest of the house. He searched each closet, under the beds, every space large enough to conceal the duffel. No luck.

  He had no time to exhaust every nook and cranny in the place. If the duffel was here, the only way to find it quickly was to wake up the old man and make him talk.

  Trevor hurried back to the old man’s room. He was still asleep, snoring softly. Trevor strode swiftly across the carpet to the wing chair by the fire. He grabbed the old man’s shoulder and gave him a hard shake.

  His eyelids popped open. Trevor placed one hand on each chair arm and leaned over him. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound emerged. He flailed his head back and forth, attempting to avoid Trevor’s vicious stare.

  “Where is my money, old man?” Trevor demanded.

  His mouth opened and closed. The sounds he made were not words. He emitted a series of grunts growing louder with each effort to communicate.

  Trevor’s patience exploded. He grabbed the old man’s bony shoulders and shook him violently. The man’s body seemed boneless, like a rag doll.

  “Mark Reacher left my money here. I want it back. Tell me where it is and I will leave you in peace,” Trevor said, leaving little doubt what he would do if the old man refused.

  He shook his head back and forth, wildly now. The grunts and guttural sounds became louder but still impossible to comprehend. Spittle drained from the corner of his lips.

  Understanding dawned.

  The old man couldn’t talk. He might not understand a word, either.

  Trevor took a few deep breaths to slow his thundering pulse. He stepped back from the chair, giving the old man a chance to calm down. Which was when Trevor noticed a writing pad and pencil on the table next to the chair.

  Trevor handed the pencil to the old man.

  He could barely grasp the fat black pencil in his right hand, holding it in his fist like a young child.

  Trevor laid the pad on his lap. He looked up at Trevor with pleading eyes.

  “You understand me?”

  The old man nodded to signal that he could hear and understand.

  “Where is my money?” Trevor demanded again.

  The old man shook his head and lifted his shoulders.

  “You don’t know? Is that it?” Trevor said, his rage barely contained. “I don’t believe you. Where is Mark Reacher?”

  As before, the old man shook his head and lifted his shoulders.

  It was too preposterous to accept. Of course, the old man had to know more than he was letting on. There was no other reasonable answer.

  Mark Reacher owned that motel. The last place Trevor’s partner went to before he disappeared. He was probably dead. Mark Reacher had probably killed him. Most likely for the money. Nothing else made any sense.

  And this old guy had to know about it. If he didn’t have the money, he knew where it was. Or where Mark Reacher was. He had to know something useful.

  Yet here he was, claiming that he didn’t know. That he couldn’t even talk.

  Well maybe he couldn’t talk. What kind of life was that? Who would want to live like that?

  But this guy obviously did.

  Maybe Trevor had gone about this the wrong way. He took a step back. Took a few breaths. Changed his approach.

  “Okay. The money’s not here. You don’t know where Mark Reacher is. What do you know that would help me get my money back and give me a reason to leave you alive when I walk out of here?”

  The old man gripped the pencil in his fist and moved it to the pad. He moved his entire hand to write two words. Don’t Know.

  Trevor read the words. “That’s a lie.”

  The old man’s head wagged vigorously, his face reddening like a balloon that might pop at any minute.

  “Jake Reacher. He’s what, Mark’s nephew? Did he take my money?”

  The old man scrunched up his face and opened his mouth and bellowed a howl that might have been the word no. Or it might have been almost anything else.

  He repeated the howl as he tried to stand. He was too feeble. Too weak. He managed to put space between himself and the chair. Then he fell to the floor, writhing and howling until Trevor could listen no more.

  Trevor took long strides over to the bed and grabbed a pillow. He brought it back to the rug in front of the fireplace and used it to smother the old man until everything stopped. The howling, the writhing, the breathing. Even his heart
beat. It all stopped.

  The old man’s glassy eyes looked straight up. All life had left him.

  Trevor waited a few minutes to be sure the old man was gone. Then he replaced the pillow on the bed, left the room, left the house through the back door, and returned empty-handed to Owen and Oscar waiting in the SUV down the block.

  Owen pulled into the roadway. At the first intersection, he asked, “Where to?”

  “Boston,” Trevor replied as he pressed the redial button on a burner phone. “Talk to me. Where’s the kid?”

  “We pulled some voicemails from the mother’s phone. The kid is headed to San Diego. Took a bit of digging, but we’ve located him on I-44 northwest of Tulsa.”

  “Keep me posted,” Trevor said before he disconnected the call.

  He checked the clock. The kid would arrive in Tulsa about the same time Trevor arrived in Boston.

  The Gulfstream was fast, but he couldn’t reach Tulsa before Jake arrived. It would take the kid another nine hours to drive to Albuquerque. Along the way, he’d pass several airports with runways long enough to land the Gulfstream.

  Trevor considered executive airports between Amarillo and Albuquerque until he settled on Tucumcari, New Mexico, as the best location. He spent the rest of the drive scheduling a reservation and organizing ground transportation.

  When Owen pulled into the parking lot at the executive airport, he parked close to the building and outside the range of surveillance cameras. All three men turned up their collars and donned hats and gloves. They pulled their travel bags from the vehicle and turned toward the entrance.

  Before they reached the glass doors, a fourth man approached the silver SUV and slipped behind the wheel. He drove the vehicle off the lot. The SUV, its remaining contents, and all forensic evidence would disappear like the other vehicles had, long before the Gulfstream reached Tucumcari.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Sunday, February 27

  1:25 p.m.

  Tulsa, Oklahoma