by Lee Child
“And?” Reacher said.
“He ignores his stepdaughter. Have you noticed that?”
Reacher said nothing. He didn’t mention Jade had been taken until later, he thought. He had her cropped out of the picture in the living room.
“My sister Anne wasn’t very obedient,” Patti said. “Nothing outrageous. Nothing unreasonable. But Edward Lane ran the marriage like a military operation. Anne couldn’t handle it. And the more she chafed, the more Lane demanded discipline. It became his fetish.”
“What did she see in him in the first place?”
“He can be charismatic. He’s strong and silent. And intelligent, in a narrow way.”
“What was she before?”
“A model.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Yes,” Patti said. “Just like the next one.”
“What happened?”
“Between them they drove the marriage on the rocks. It was inevitable, I guess. One day she told me she wanted a divorce. I was all in favor of that, of course. It was the best thing for her. But she tried to do the whole drag-out knock-down thing. Alimony, division of assets, the whole nine yards. Which was the worst possible thing she could have done. I knew it was a mistake. I told her just to get the hell out while she still could. But she had brought money to the relationship. Lane had used it for part of his initial stake. Anne wanted her share back. But Lane couldn’t even handle the insubordination of his wife wanting out of the marriage. To be made to give her money as well was out of the question for him. And it would have been a public humiliation, because he would have had to go out and find another investor. So he went completely postal. He faked a kidnapping and had her killed.”
Silence for a moment.
“The police were involved,” Reacher said. “The FBI, too. There must have been a certain level of scrutiny.”
Patti turned around to face the room. Smiled, sadly.
“Here we go,” she said. “We’ve reached the point where the little sister is sounding a little crazy and obsessed. But obviously Lane planned it well. He made it seem very real.”
“How?”
“His men. He employs a bunch of killers. They’re all used to obeying orders. And they’re all smart. They all know how to do stuff like this. And they aren’t virgins. Every single one of them has been out on covert operations. And probably every single one of them has killed before, up close and personal.”
Reacher nodded. No question about it. Every one of them has. Many times.
“You got any particular suspects in mind?” he asked.
“None of the guys you’ve seen,” Patti said. “Nobody who’s still in the A-team. I don’t think the dynamic would permit that. Not as time went by. I don’t think it would be sustainable, psychologically. But I don’t think he would have used B-teamers. He would have needed people he could have trusted completely.”
“So who?”
“A-team guys who aren’t around anymore.”
“Who would be in that category?”
“There were two,” Patti said. “A guy called Hobart and a guy called Knight.”
“Why aren’t they around anymore? Why would two trusted A-teamers just up and leave?”
“Shortly after Anne died there was an operation overseas somewhere. Apparently it went bad. Two men didn’t come back. Those two.”
“That would be a coincidence,” Reacher said. “Wouldn’t it? The two guilty men were the two who didn’t come back?”
“I think Lane made sure they didn’t come back. He needed to tidy things up.”
Reacher said nothing.
“I know,” Patti said. “The little sister is crazy, right?”
Reacher gazed at her. She didn’t look crazy. A little spacey, maybe. In a sixties way, like her sister. She had a curtain of long blonde hair, straight, parted in the middle, just the same as Anne in the photograph. Big blue eyes, a button nose, a dusting of freckles, pale skin. She was wearing a white peasant blouse and faded blue jeans. She was barefoot and braless. You could have taken her picture and put it straight on the cover of a compilation CD. The Summer of Love. The Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company. Reacher liked music like that. He had been seven during the Summer of Love, and he wished he had been seventeen.
“How do you think it went down?” he asked.
“Knight drove Anne that day,” Patti said. “That’s an established fact. He took her shopping. Waited at the curb. But she never came out of the store. Next thing anyone knew was a phone call four hours later. The usual thing. No cops, a ransom demand.”
“Voice?”
“Disguised.”
“How?”
“Like the guy was talking through a handkerchief or something.”
“How much was the ransom?”
“A hundred grand.”
“But Lane did call the cops.”
Patti nodded. “But only to cover his ass. It was like he wanted independent witnesses. Very important to retain his credibility with the other guys that weren’t in on the scheme.”
“Then what?”
“Like you see in the movies. The FBI tapped the phones and moved in on the ransom drop. Lane’s story is that they were seen. But the whole thing was phony. They waited, nobody showed up, because nobody was ever going to show up. So they brought the money home again. It was all a performance. A charade. Lane acted it all out and came home and gave the word that he was in the clear, that the cops had bought the story, that the FBI was convinced, and then Anne was killed. I’m sure of that.”
“Where was the other guy during all of this? Hobart?”
“Nobody knows for sure. He was off duty. He said he was in Philadelphia. But obviously he had been in the store, just waiting for Anne to show. He was the other half of the equation.”
“Did you go to the cops at the time?”
“They ignored me,” Patti said. “Remember, this all was five years ago, not long after the Twin Towers. Everyone was preoccupied. And the military was suddenly back in fashion. You know, everyone was looking for their daddy, so people like Lane were the flavor of the month. Ex–Special Forces soldiers were pretty cool back then. I was fighting an uphill battle.”
“What about this cop Brewer? Now?”
“He tolerates me. What else can he do? I’m a taxpayer. But I don’t suppose he’s doing anything about it. I’m realistic.”
“You got any evidence against Lane at all?”
“No,” Patti said. “None at all. All I’ve got is context and feeling and intuition. That’s all I can share.”
“Context?”
“Do you know what a private military corporation is really for? Fundamentally?”
“Fundamentally its purpose is to allow the Pentagon to escape Congressional oversight.”
“Exactly,” Patti said. “They’re not necessarily better fighters than people currently enlisted. Often they’re worse, and they’re certainly more expensive. They’re there to break the rules. Simple as that. If the Geneva Conventions get in the way, it doesn’t matter to them, because nobody can call them on it. The government is insulated.”
“You’ve studied hard,” Reacher said.
“So what kind of a man is Lane to participate?”
“You tell me.”
“He’s a sordid egomaniac weasel.”
“What do you wish you had done? To keep Anne alive?”
“I should have convinced her. I should have just gotten her out of there, penniless but alive.”
“Not easy,” Reacher said. “You were the kid sister.”
“But I knew.”
“When did you move here?”
“About a year after Anne died. I couldn’t let it rest.”
“Does Lane know you’re here?”
She shook her head. “I’m very careful. And this city is incredibly anonymous. You can go years without ever laying eyes on your neighbor.”
“What do you want me to
do?”
“Do?”
“You brought me here for a purpose. And you took a hell of a risk doing it.”
“I think it’s time for me to take risks.”
“What do you want me to do?” Reacher repeated.
“I want you to just walk away from him. For your own sake. Don’t dirty your hands with his business. No possible good can come of it.”
Silence for a moment.
“And he’s dangerous,” Patti said. “More dangerous than you can know. It’s not smart to be anywhere near him.”
“I’ll be careful,” Reacher said.
“They’re all dangerous.”
“I’ll be careful,” Reacher said again. “I always am. But I’m going back there now. I’ll walk away on my own schedule.”
Patti Joseph said nothing.
“But I’d like to meet with this guy Brewer,” Reacher said.
“Why? Because you want to trade guy jokes about the nutty little sister?”
“No,” Reacher said. “Because if he’s any kind of a cop at all he’ll have checked with the original detectives and the FBI agents. He might have a clearer picture.”
“Clearer which way?”
“Whichever way,” Reacher said. “I’d like to know.”
“He might be here later.”
“Here?”
“He usually comes over after I phone in a report.”
“You said he wasn’t doing anything.”
“I think he just comes for the company. I think he’s lonely. He drops by, at the end of his shift, on his way home.”
“Where does he live?”
“Staten Island.”
“Where does he work?”
“Midtown.”
“So this isn’t exactly on his way home.”
Patti Joseph said nothing.
“When does his shift end?” Reacher asked.
“Midnight.”
“He visits you at midnight? Way out of his way?”
“I’m not involved with him or anything,” Patti said. “He’s lonely. I’m lonely. That’s all.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Make an excuse to get out,” Patti said. “Check my window. If Brewer’s here, the light will be on. If he isn’t, it won’t be.”
CHAPTER 19
Patti Joseph went back to her lonely vigil at the window and Reacher let himself out and left her there. He walked clockwise around her block for caution’s sake and came up on the Dakota from the west. It was a quarter to ten in the evening. It was warm. There was music somewhere in the Park. Music and people, far away. It was a perfect late-summer night. Probably baseball up in the Bronx or out at Shea, a thousand bars and clubs just warming up, eight million people looking back on the day or looking forward to the next.
Reacher stepped inside the building.
The lobby staff called up to the apartment and let him go ahead to the elevator. He got out and turned the corner and found Gregory in the corridor, waiting for him.
“We thought you’d quit on us,” Gregory said.
“Went for a walk,” Reacher said. “Any news?”
“Too early.”
Reacher followed him into the apartment. It smelled sour. Chinese food, sweat, worry. Edward Lane was in the armchair next to the phone. He was staring up at the ceiling. His face was composed. Next to him at the end of a sofa was an empty place. A dented cushion. Recently occupied by Gregory, Reacher guessed. Then came Burke, sitting still. And Addison, and Perez, and Kowalski. Carter Groom was leaning on the wall, facing the door, vigilant. Like a sentry. I’m all business, he had said.
“When will they call?” Lane asked.
Good question, Reacher thought. Will they call at all? Or will you call them? And give them the OK to pull the triggers?
But he said: “They won’t call before eight in the morning. Drive time and counting time, it won’t be any faster than that.”
Lane glanced at his watch.
“Ten hours from now,” he said.
“Yes,” Reacher said.
Somebody will call somebody ten hours from now.
The first of the ten hours passed in silence. The phone didn’t ring. Nobody said a word. Reacher sat still and felt the chance of a happy outcome receding fast. He pictured the bedroom photograph in his mind and felt Kate and Jade moving away from him. Like a comet that had come close enough to Earth to be faintly visible but had then flung itself into a new orbit and was hurtling away into the frozen wastes of space and dwindling to a faint speck of light that would surely soon vanish forever.
“I did everything they asked,” Lane said, to nobody except himself.
Nobody replied.
The lone man surprised his temporary guests by moving toward the window, not the door. Then he surprised them more by using his fingernails to pick at the duct tape seam that held the cloth over the glass. He peeled the tape away from the wall until he was able to fold back a narrow rectangle of fabric and reveal a tall slim sliver of New York City at night. The famous view. A hundred thousand lit windows glittering against the darkness like tiny diamonds on a field of black velvet. Like nowhere else in the world.
He said, “I know you love it.”
Then he said, “But say goodbye to it.”
Then he said, “Because you’re never going to see it again.”
Halfway through the second hour Lane looked at Reacher and said, “There’s food in the kitchen, if you want some.” Then he smiled a thin humorless smile and said, “Or to be technically accurate there’s food in the kitchen whether you want some or not.”
Reacher didn’t want food. He wasn’t hungry. He had eaten a hot dog not long before. But he wanted to get the hell out of the living room. That was for sure. The atmosphere was like eight men sitting around a deathbed. He stood up.
“Thanks,” he said.
He walked quietly into the kitchen. Nobody followed him. There were dirty plates and a dozen open containers of Chinese food on the countertop. Half-eaten and cold and pungent and congealed. He left them alone and sat on a stool. Glanced to his right at the open office door. He could see the photographs on the desk. Anne Lane, identical to her sister Patti. Kate Lane, gazing fondly at the child that had been cut out of the picture.
He listened hard. No sound from the living room. Nobody coming. He got off the stool and stepped inside the office. Stood still for a moment. Desk, computer, fax machine, phones, file cabinets, shelves.
He started with the shelves.
There were maybe eighteen linear feet of them. There were phone books on them, and manuals for firearms, and a one-volume history of Argentina, and a book called Glock: The New Wave in Combat Handguns, and an alarm clock, and mugs full of pens and pencils, and an atlas of the world. The atlas was old. The Soviet Union was still in it. And Yugoslavia. Some of the African countries still had their former colonial identities. Next to the atlas there was a fat Rolodex full of five hundred index cards with names and phone numbers and MOS codes on them. Military Occupational Specialties. Most of them were 11-Bravo. Infantry. Combat arms. At random Reacher flipped to G and looked for Carter Groom. Not there. Then B for Burke. Not there, either. So clearly this was the B-team candidate pool. Some names had black lines through them with KIA or MIA notations written on the corners of the cards. Killed in Action, Missing in Action. But the rest of the names were still in the game. Nearly five hundred guys, and maybe some women, ready and available and looking for work.
Reacher put the Rolodex back and touched the computer mouse. The hard drive started up and a dialog box on the screen asked for a password. Reacher glanced at the open door and tried Kate. Access was denied. He tried O5LaneE for Colonel Edward Lane. Same result. Access denied. He shrugged and gave it up. The password was probably the guy’s birthday or his old service number or the name of his high school football team. No way of knowing, without further research.
He moved on to the file cabinets.
There were four of them, st
andard store-bought items made of painted steel. Maybe thirty inches high. Two drawers in each of them. Eight drawers total. Unlabeled. Unlocked. He stood still and listened again and then slid the first drawer open. It moved quietly on ball bearing runners. It had twin hanging rails with six file dividers made of thin yellow cardboard slung between them. All six were full of paperwork. Reacher used his thumb and riffed through. Glanced down, obliquely. Financial records. Money moving in and out. No amount bigger than six figures and none smaller than four. Otherwise, incomprehensible. He closed the drawer.
He opened the bottom drawer on the left. Same hanging rails. Same yellow dividers. But they were bulky with the kind of big plastic wallets that come in the glove boxes of new cars. Instruction books, warranty certificates, service records. Titles. Insurance invoices. BMW, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, Land Rover. Some had valet keys in see-through plastic envelopes. Some had spare keys and remote fobs on the kind of promotional keyrings that dealers give away. There were EZ-Pass toll records. Receipts from gas stations. Business cards from salesmen and service managers.
Reacher closed the drawer. Glanced back at the door. Saw Burke standing there, silent, just watching him.
CHAPTER 20
Burke didn’t speak for a long moment. Then he said, “I’m going for a walk.”
“OK,” Reacher said.
Burke said nothing back.
“You want company?” Reacher asked.
Burke glanced at the computer screen. Then down at the file drawers.
“I’ll keep you company,” Reacher said.
Burke just shrugged. Reacher followed him out through the kitchen. Through the foyer. Lane glanced at them from the living room, briefly, preoccupied with his thoughts. He didn’t say anything. Reacher followed Burke out to the corridor. They rode down in the elevator in silence. Stepped out to the street and turned east toward Central Park. Reacher looked up at Patti Joseph’s window. It was dark. The room behind it was unlit. Therefore she was alone. He pictured her in the chair behind the sill, in the gloom. Pictured her pen scratching on her pad of paper. 2327 hrs., Burke and Venti leave TDA on foot, head east toward Central Park. Or CP. A person who wrote TDA for the Dakota would write CP for Central Park, surely. And maybe she had dropped Venti and was using his real name now. He had told her what it was. Maybe she had written Burke and Reacher leave TDA.