by Child, Lee
Abby looked up at him.
She didn’t speak.
He shook pebbles of glass out of his jacket and put it on. He put the guns back in the pockets. He made a mental note: forty-four rounds remaining.
He said, ‘We should go check the back offices.’
She said, ‘Why?’
‘They might have money.’
Reacher and Abby stepped and minced around the bodies and the blood and the chemical spill, all the way to the far back corner. Ahead of them through the archway was a long narrow corridor. Doors to the left, doors to the right. First on the left was a windowless room with four laminate tables pushed together end to end. Like a boardroom. First on the right was a plain office with a desk and a chair and filing cabinets. No clue about its function. No cash in the cabinets. Nothing in the desk either, except normal office crap and a dozen cigars and a box of kitchen matches. They moved on. They found nothing of interest, until the last door on the left.
There was an outer office, and an inner office. Like a suite. Some kind of a CEO set-up. Like a commanding officer and an executive officer. The doorway between the two was piled high with bodies. There were more in the room beyond. Twelve in total. Including a guy behind a big desk, shot once in the face, and a guy in a chair, shot three times in the chest. A bizarre, static tableau. Infinitely still. Absolutely silent. It was impossible to reconstruct what had happened. It looked like everyone had shot everyone else. Some kind of unexplained rampage.
Abby stayed out of the inner office. Reacher went in. He put his hands high on the door jambs and clambered over the piled bodies. He trod on backs and necks and heads. Once inside he picked his way around behind the desk. The guy who had been shot in the face was slumped in a leather chair with wheels. Reacher moved it out the way. He checked the desk drawers. Right away in the bottom left he found a metal cash box, about the size of a family Bible, painted stern metallic colours, like something from an old-time country savings and loan. It was locked. He pulled the chair closer again and patted the dead guy’s pockets. Felt keys in the pants, right side. A decent bunch. He pulled them out, finger and thumb. Some were big, some were small. The third small key he tried opened the box.
In it was a lift-out tray at the top, with a handful of greasy ones and fives, and a scattering of nickels and dimes. Not good. But it got better. Under the tray was a banded brick of hundred dollar bills. Brand new. Unbroken. Fresh from the bank. A hundred notes. Ten thousand dollars. Close to what the Shevicks needed. Short by a grand, but better than a poke in the eye.
Reacher put the money in his pocket. He threaded his way back to the door. He climbed over the bodies again.
Abby said, ‘I want to go.’
‘Me too,’ Reacher said. ‘Just one more thing.’
He led her back to the first office they had seen. On the right, opposite the boardroom. The cigar smoker. Newly dead, Reacher assumed. But not from smoking. He took the box of kitchen matches from his desk. And paper, from everywhere he could find it. He struck a match and lit a sheet. He held it until it flamed up high. Then he dropped it in a trash basket.
Abby asked him, ‘Why?’
‘It’s never enough just to win,’ he said. ‘The other guy has got to know for sure he lost. Plus it’s safer this way. We were here. We probably left traces. Best to avoid any kind of confusion later on.’
They struck match after match and lit sheet after sheet of paper. They dropped them in every room. Grey smoke was drifting when they left the corridor. They lit the shrink wrap around the piles of boards. Reacher dropped a match in the pool of preservative, but it sputtered out immediately. Not flammable. Which made sense, in a lumber yard. But gasoline was flammable. That was for damn sure. Reacher took the gas cap off the shattered car and dropped the last sheet of burning paper down the filler neck.
Then they hustled. Thirty yards to the scooped-out kerb, seventy more to the first corner, and then they were gone.
Abby’s phone was full of missed calls from Vantresca. He said he was waiting across the street from the propped-up building with the heavy black net. He said he had been waiting there a long time. He said he didn’t know what to do next. Abby called him back. Between them they worked out a new rendezvous. He would drive in one direction, and they would walk in the other direction, and they would spot each other somewhere along the way. Before they set out again Reacher looked back the way they had come. Half a mile away there was a thread of smoke in the sky. The next time he checked it was a pillar of smoke, a mile away. Then it was a distant boiling black mass with flames dancing at the base. They heard fire truck sirens, booming and barking, more and more of them, until the faraway sound was a continuous bass wail. They heard police car sirens echoing through the east side streets.
Then Vantresca showed up in a black car. It was wide and squat and muscular. It had a chrome hood ornament, in the shape of a big cat leaping. A jaguar, presumably, for a Jaguar. It was small inside. Vantresca was driving. Hogan was next to him in the front. Barton was in the back. Only one place left. Abby had to sit in Reacher’s lap. Which was OK with him.
Hogan said, ‘Something is on fire over there.’
‘Your fault,’ Reacher said.
‘How?’
‘You pointed out that if the Ukrainians go down, the Albanians would take over the city. I didn’t want that to happen. It felt like it would be a win-lose.’
‘So what’s on fire?’
‘The Albanian HQ. It’s in the back of a lumber yard. It should burn for days.’
Hogan said nothing.
Barton said, ‘Someone else will take over.’
‘Maybe not,’ Reacher said. ‘The new commissioner will have a clean slate. Maybe it’s easier to stop new people coming in than it is to get old people out.’
Vantresca said, ‘What next?’
‘We need to find the Ukrainian nerve centre.’
‘Sure, but how?’
‘I guess we need to know exactly what it does. That might tell us what to look for. To some extent form follows function. For instance, if it was a drug lab, it would need exhaust fans, and gas and water, and so on and so forth.’
‘I don’t know what it does,’ Vantresca said.
‘Call the journalist,’ Reacher said. ‘The woman you helped. She might know. At least she might know what they’re into. If necessary we could work it out backward, about what kind of place they would need.’
‘She won’t talk to me. She was terrified.’
‘Give me her number,’ Reacher said. ‘I’ll call her.’
‘Why would she talk to you?’
‘I have a nicer personality. People talk to me all the time. Sometimes I can’t stop them.’
‘I would have to go to my office.’
‘Go to the Shevicks’ first,’ Reacher said. ‘I have something for them. Right now they need reassurance.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Gregory pieced the story together from early word he got three separate ways, from a cop on his payroll, and a guy in the fire department who owed him money, and a secret snitch he had behind a bar on the east side. Right away he called a meeting of his inner council. They gathered together, in the office in back of the taxi dispatcher.
‘Dino is dead,’ Gregory said. ‘Jetmir is dead. Their entire inner council is dead. Their top twenty are gone, just like that. Maybe more. They are no longer an effective force. Nor will they ever be, ever again. They have no leadership prospects. Their most senior survivor is an old bruiser named Hoxha. And he was spared only because he was in the hospital. Because he can’t talk. Some leader he would make.’
Someone asked, ‘How did it happen?’
‘The Russians, obviously,’ Gregory said. ‘Shock and awe east of Center, clearing half the field, pre-empting a possible defensive alliance, before turning their full might on us alone.’
‘Good strategy.’
‘But badly executed,’ Gregory said. ‘They were clumsy at the lumber yard. Every cop and every fire
fighter in the city is over there. The east side will be no use to anyone for months to come. Too much scrutiny. Bribes only go so far. Some things can’t be ignored. I bet the whole thing is already on the television. In the spotlight, literally. Where no one wants to be. Which makes the west side the whole enchilada now. Now they’ll want it more than ever.’
‘When will they come for us?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gregory said. ‘But we’ll be ready. Starting right now, we’ll go to Situation C. Tighten the guard. Take up defensive positions. Let no one through.’
‘We can’t sustain Situation C indefinitely. We need to know when they’re coming.’
Gregory nodded.
‘Aaron Shevick must know,’ he said. ‘We should ask him.’
‘We can’t find him.’
‘Do we still have people at the old woman’s house?’
‘Yes, but Shevick never shows up there any more. Probably the old woman tipped him off. Obviously she’s his mother or his aunt or something.’
Gregory nodded again.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘There’s your answer. Call our boys and tell them to bring her in. She can get him on the phone, while we’re working on her. He’ll come running, the first time he hears her scream.’
Vantresca had picked them up a mile from the lumber yard, which meant the Shevicks’ house was another mile further on, to the southwest, like two sides of a triangle. The black Jaguar rumbled through the streets. By then it was mid-morning. The sun was high. The neighbourhood was harsh with light and shadows. Reacher asked Vantresca to pull over at the gas station with the deli counter. They parked in the back, next to the car wash tunnel. A white sedan was inching its way through, under the thrashing brushes. There was blue foam and white bubbles everywhere.
Reacher said, ‘I guess now we can put the Shevicks in an east side hotel. No need to hide any more. There’s no one left to care if we’re seen walking in with them.’
‘They can’t afford it,’ Abby said.
Reacher checked Gezim Hoxha’s potato-shaped wallet.
He said, ‘They don’t need to.’
‘I’m sure they would prefer it all spent on Meg.’
‘It’s a drop in the ocean. And this ain’t a democracy. They can’t stay in their house any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘We need to get this thing rolling. I want their capo unsettled. Gregory, right? I want him to hear us knocking at the door. Might as well start right here, with the guys outside the house. They’ve been cluttering up the place long enough. But there might be a response. So the Shevicks need to move out. Just for the time being.’
‘There’s no room in the car,’ Barton said.
‘We’ll take their Lincoln,’ Reacher said. ‘We’ll drive the Shevicks to a fancy hotel in the back of a Town Car. They might like that.’
‘They live on a cul-de-sac,’ Vantresca said. ‘We’ll be approaching head on. No element of surprise.’
‘For you, maybe,’ Reacher said. ‘I’ll go in the back again, and come out through the house. Behind them. While they’re trying to figure out who the hell you guys are. That should be a surprise.’
The Jaguar rolled back out to the main drag, and took the early right, and the left, and stopped in the same spot Reacher and Abby had parked the Chrysler, before dawn, outside the Shevicks’ back-to-back neighbour. Outside the informer’s house, whose calls would henceforth go unanswered, because the instrument on the other end of the line had long ago melted. Like the Chrysler had been, the Jaguar was lined up exactly parallel with the Lincoln, nose to nose and tail to tail, about two hundred feet apart, the depth of two small residential lots, with two buildings in the way. But only for a moment. Reacher got out, and it rolled onward.
Reacher walked through the neighbour’s front yard and wrenched open the fold-back section of fence. He walked through the neighbour’s back yard. To the rickety back fence. Which was either the neighbour’s, or the Shevicks’, or shared. He had no great desire to climb it again. So he kicked it down. If it was the Shevicks’, then Trulenko could buy them a new one. If it was the neighbour’s, then tough shit, for being an informer. If it was shared, then fifty-fifty on each of the above.
He walked through the Shevicks’ back yard, past the spot where the photographs had been taken, to their kitchen door. He knocked gently on the glass. No response. He knocked again, a little louder. Still no response.
He tried the handle. Locked, from the inside. He looked in through the window. Nothing to see. No people. Just the heart-monitor countertops and the atomic table and the vinyl chairs. He tracked along, past the photography spot, to the next window in line. Their bedroom. No one in it. Just a made bed and a closed closet door.
But an open room door. Beyond which he saw a moving shadow out in the hallway. A complicated two-headed, four-legged shape. One half tall, the other half short. Slight movement, like a halfhearted struggle and an easy restraint.
Reacher put his hand in his pocket. Chose the fresh Glock. Seventeen rounds, plus one in the chamber. He hustled back to the kitchen door. He took a breath, and another, and backhanded his elbow through the glass, and snaked his hand in and turned the lock, one smooth movement, and he stepped inside. Noisy, obviously, which meant right on time a head stuck in, around the door to the hallway, to find out what the hell was going on. A pale face, pale eyes, fair hair. Black suit coat, white shirt, black silk necktie. Reacher aimed an inch below the knot of the tie, but he was a fair man, so he didn’t fire until he saw a hand with a gun swing into clear air, on a fast arc a yard below the face, whereupon he pulled the trigger and blew a hole in the guy big enough to stick his thumb in. The round went through and through and punched into the far wall beyond. The guy went down vertically, like a cut puppet.
The roar of the shot died away.
Silence from the hallway.
Then a faint muffled whimper, like a weak old person trying to scream, with a strong man’s hand clamped over his mouth. Or her mouth. Then the scrape of a shoe, hopeless, going nowhere. Token resistance. The dead guy was leaking blood on the parquet. It was soaking into the seams. A mess. Reacher found himself figuring a couple of yards would need to be replaced. Trulenko could pay for it. Plus spackle, for the bullet hole in the wall. And paint. Plus new glass for the kitchen door. All good.
Silence from the hallway. Reacher backed away to the outside door. The obvious play was to split up, into two squads, and send one out a back entrance, and around the building. He stepped over the broken glass and out to the yard. He turned right, and right, and right again. He paused a beat at the front of the house. He saw the Lincoln, parked on the street, with no one in it. No sign of the Jaguar. Not yet. He traced its route in his head. North to the next major cross street, west to the main drag, south to their usual turn, and then into the development, with its narrow streets and its tight right-angle corners. Five minutes, maybe. Six maximum. They wouldn’t get lost. Abby knew the way.
He moved along the front of the house, on the grass a yard from the wall, because of the foundation plantings. He looked in the hallway window at a shallow angle. Saw a second guy with a pale face and a black suit. He had his meaty left palm clamped over Maria Shevick’s mouth. In his right hand he held a gun, with its muzzle jammed hard against the side of her head. Another H&K P7, steely and delicate. His finger was tight on the trigger. Aaron Shevick was standing a yard away, rigid, wide eyed, plainly terrified. His lips were clamped. Clearly he had been told to keep quiet. Clearly he wasn’t about to risk disobedience. Not with a gun to his wife’s head.
Reacher checked the end of the cul-de-sac again. Still no Jaguar. The guy holding Maria was staring inward at the kitchen door. Waiting for whoever was in there to come on out. Directly into a classic standoff. Drop the gun or I’ll shoot the old lady. Except the guy couldn’t shoot the old lady, because a split second after he pulled the trigger he would get his own head blown off. A classic standoff. A permanent triangle. The threat vec
tors would go around and around for ever, like a feedback loop, howling and screaming.
Reacher worked out the angles. The guy was a head taller than Maria Shevick. In a literal sense. He was holding her against him, her back to his front, with the clamped left hand, and the top of her head fit neatly under his chin. Then came his own head. At that point Reacher was looking at it from the side. A slabby white cheek, a small pink ear, buzzed fair hair glittering over ridges of bone. He was over thirty, but maybe not yet forty. Was he senior enough to know where their nerve centre was? That was Reacher’s main question.
And the answer was no, he thought. Like before. We’re guys who sit in cars and watch doors. You think they would tell folks like us where Trulenko is? The guy was no use.
Unfortunate.
Especially for him.
Reacher dropped to the ground and elbowed-and-toed his way to the narrow concrete path, and over it, and beyond it. The front door was standing open. The guy was still staring at the kitchen. Still waiting. Reacher squirmed around until his angle of view through the open door was a quarter circle different than his oblique glance in through the window. Now he was looking at the back of the guy’s head. A wide white neck, tight rolls of hard flesh, the glittering buzz cut over lumps of bone. He was looking at it all from a very low angle. He was prone on the ground, outside at grade level, below the step, below the threshold, below the hallway floor. He was aiming the Glock at a steep upward angle. At a point where the guy’s spine met his skull. Which was as high as he dared to go. He wanted the round to dig in, not crease off. Which happened, sometimes, with shallow angles. Some people had skulls like concrete.
He counted to three, and breathed out, long and slow.
He pulled the trigger. The guy’s head cracked open like a dropped watermelon and the bullet came out the top of his skull and lodged in the ceiling directly above him. The air was instantly full of pink and purple mist. Instant brain death. Messy, but necessary, with a finger hard on a trigger. The only safe way. Medically proven.