by Lee Child
“What?”
“Not much. He saved most of it. For his retirement. But he bought a 1980 Corvette. He thought it was a classic. Like a collector’s item. But the 1980 Corvette was the worst Corvette ever made. It was a piece of shit. They junked the 350 and put in a 305, for emissions. It was making 180 horsepower. I could run faster than a 1980 Corvette. Something just went off in my head. I mean, starving for some kind of a criminal mastermind would be one thing. Doing it for a complete idiot was something else. A complete, tasteless, clueless, sordid, pathetic little idiot.”
“So you hauled him in?”
“I built that case like it was Ethel Rosenberg. I was out of my mind. I checked it forward and backward and forward again. I could have taken it to the Supreme Court. I brought him in. I told him I was upset. He was in a Class A uniform. He had all kinds of busywork medals. He laughed at me. A kind of patronizing sneer. Like he was better than me. I thought, you bought a 1980 Corvette, asshole. Not me. So who’s better? Then I hit him. I popped him in the gut to fold him over and then I banged his head on my desk.”
“What happened?”
“I broke his skull. He was in a coma six months. He was never quite all there afterward. And you were right. I was canned, basically. No more 110th for me. Only the strength of the case saved me. They didn’t want it in the newspaper. I would have been busted big time otherwise. So I moved on.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t remember. I was too ashamed of myself. I did a bad thing. And I blew the best command I ever had.”
Susan didn’t answer.
Reacher said, “I got to thinking about it afterward. You know, why had I done it? I couldn’t answer. Still can’t.”
“You did it for your guys.”
“Maybe.”
“You were putting the world to rights.”
“Not really. I don’t want to put the world to rights. Maybe I should, but I don’t.”
She said nothing.
He said, “I just don’t like people who put the world to wrongs. Is that a phrase?”
“It should be. What happened?”
“Nothing more, really. That’s the story. You should ask for a new desk. There’s no honor in that old one.”
“I mean, what happened tonight?”
Reacher didn’t answer.
Susan said, “Tell me. I know something happened.”
“How?”
“Because you called me.”
“I’ve called you plenty.”
“When you needed something. So you need something now.”
“I’m OK.”
“It’s in your voice.”
“I’m losing two-zip.”
“How?”
“Two KIA.”
“Who?”
“A cop and an old woman.”
“Two-zip? It isn’t a game.”
“You know damn well it’s a game.”
“It’s people.”
“I know it’s people. I’m looking at one of them right now. And the only thing stopping me putting my gun to my head is pretending it’s a game.”
“You got a gun?”
“In my pocket. A nice old .38.”
“Leave it in your pocket, OK?”
Reacher said nothing.
Susan said, “Don’t touch it, OK?”
“Give me a good reason.”
“A .38 won’t necessarily get the job done. You know that. We’ve all seen it happen. You could end up like the general.”
“I’ll aim carefully. Square on. I’ll make sure.”
“Don’t do it, Reacher.”
“Relax. I’m not going to shoot myself. Not my style. I’m just going to sit here until my head explodes all on its own.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“It’s just that I don’t like to think of it as a game.”
“You know it’s a game. It has to be a game. That’s the only way to make it bearable.”
“OK, it’s a game. What are we in? The final quarter?”
“Overtime.”
“So give me the play by play so far. Brief me. Bring me up to date. Like we were working together.”
“I wish we were.”
“We are. What have we got?”
He didn’t answer.
She said, “Reacher, what have we got?”
So Reacher took a breath and began to tell her what they had, slowly at first, and then faster as he picked up on the old shorthand rhythms he remembered from years of talking to people who understood what he understood, and saw what he saw, and grasped what didn’t need to be spelled out. He told her about the bus, and the meth, and the trial, and the jail, and the police department, and the crisis plan, and the lawyer, and the witness protection, and the riot, and Plato, and the underground storage, and Peterson, and Janet Salter.
Her first response was: “Put your hand in your pocket.”
He asked, “Why?”
“Take out your gun.”
“Now that’s OK?”
“More than OK. It’s necessary. The bad guy saw you.”
“When?”
“While you were alone with Salter in the house. He had five hours.”
“He didn’t come. He was up at the prison the whole time.”
“That’s an assumption. We don’t know that for sure. He could have checked in, dropped off the radio net, slipped away, gone back. And do we even know that they really called the roll at all? A thing like that, sure, it’s in the plan as written, but who’s to say it actually gets done, you know, in real life, in a situation like that, right when the shit is hitting the fan?”
“Whatever, I didn’t see him.”
“He doesn’t know that. If he saw you, he’s going to assume you saw him. He’s going to come after you.”
“That’s a lot of ifs and assumptions.”
“Reacher, think about it. What’s to stop this guy getting away with it? He popped the lawyer, and Peterson, and Salter, three rounds from a throw-down pistol. He’s saving a fourth for you, and then he’s home free. Nobody will ever know who he was.”
“I already don’t know who he was.”
“He’s not sure of that. And he’s not sure you won’t figure it out eventually. You’re his last obstacle.”
“Why hasn’t he come after me already?”
“No safe opportunity yet. That’s the only possible reason. He’s going to be cautious with you. More so than with the others. The lawyer was a patsy, Peterson was a bumpkin, and Salter was a harmless old lady. You’re different.”
“Not so very different.”
“You need to pull back to Rapid City. Hole up somewhere and talk to the FBI.”
“I don’t have a vehicle.”
“You have a telephone. You’re talking on it right now. Put it down and then call the FBI. Keep your guard up until they get there.”
He didn’t answer.
She asked, “Are you going to do that?”
“I doubt it.”
“You weren’t responsible for those people, you know.”
“Says who?”
“All of this would have happened just the same without you. It’s a million-to-one chance you were there at all.”
“Peterson was a nice guy. And a good cop. He wanted to be a better cop. He was one of those guys who knew enough to know he didn’t know everything. I liked him.”
Susan said nothing.
“I liked Mrs. Salter, too. She was a noble old bird.”
“You need to get out of there. You’re outnumbered. Plato won’t come alone.”
“I hope he doesn’t.”
“It’s dangerous.”
Reacher said, “For him.”
Susan said, “Do you remember as a kid, watching a movie about a creature in a lagoon?”
“Is that thing still in my file?”
“In the back index.”
“And you read it?”
“I was interested.
”
“They got it wrong. And they took away my blade, which pissed me off.”
“How did they get it wrong?”
“I wasn’t some kind of a genetic freak. I was born as scared as anyone. Maybe more so. I lay awake crying with the best of them. But I got tired of it. I trained myself out of it. An act of will. I rerouted fear into aggression. It was easy enough to do.”
“At the age of six?”
“No, I was an old hand by then. I was four when I started. I had the job done by the time I was five.”
“Is that what you’re doing now? Rerouting guilt into aggression?”
“I took an oath. Same as you did. All enemies, foreign and domestic. Looks like I’ve got one of each here. Plato, and whoever his bent cop is.”
“Your oath lapsed.”
“It never lapses.”
She asked, “How does a six-year-old have his own switchblade, anyway?”
“Didn’t you have one?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you have one now?”
“No.”
“You should get one.”
She said, “And you should go to Rapid City and do this thing properly.”
“We’re short of time.”
“You have no legal standing.”
“So put another tag on my file. Or save them all some effort. Just Xerox it. Three copies, FBI, DEA, and the local South Dakota people. Send them out overnight.”
“You’re not thinking straight. You’re punishing yourself. You can’t win them all. You don’t have to win them all.”
“They put you in charge of the 110th?”
“And I’ll stay in charge. As long as I want.”
“This time it was really important.”
“They’re all important.”
“Not like this. I’m staring at a nice old lady with a hole in her head. She mattered more to me than being hungry.”
“Stop looking at her.”
Reacher looked down at the floor.
Susan said, “You can’t change the past.”
“I know.”
“You can’t atone. And you don’t need to, anyway. That guy deserved to be in a coma, maybe forever.”
“Maybe.”
“Go to Rapid City.”
“No.”
“Then come to Virginia. We’ll deal with this together.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Don’t you want to come to Virginia?”
“Sure I do.”
“So do it.”
“I will. Tomorrow.”
“Do it now.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“There was a question you used to ask me.”
“Was there?”
“You stopped asking it.”
“What was it?”
“You used to ask if I was married.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
Reacher looked up again. Janet Salter stared right back at him.
He said, “I’ll leave tomorrow.”
He hung up the phone.
Five minutes to two in the morning.
Two hours to go.
Chapter 40
Three hours into the flight, and Plato was getting tense. Unsurprisingly. His life was like a video game. One thing popped up at him after another. Each thing had to be dealt with efficiently and comprehensively. From the most important to the least. Not that even the least important thing was trivial. He spent fifteen hundred dollars a month on rubber bands alone. Just to bind up all the cash that he took to the bank. There were no small problems. And plenty of big ones. And his performance was judged not only on substance, but also on style. Drama was weakness. Especially for him.
The irony was that he had been large as a child. Until he was seven he was as big or bigger than anyone else. At eight he was still fully competitive. At nine he was in the ballpark. Then he had stopped growing. No one knew why. No one knew if it was genetic, or a disease, or an environmental factor. Maybe mercury, or lead, or some other heavy metal. Certainly it was not a lack of food or proper care. His parents had always been present and competent. At first they had turned a blind eye. The assumption was that such a thing would correct itself. But it didn’t. So first his father had turned away, and then his mother.
Now no one turned away.
His cell phone was switched on. Normal rules did not apply to him. It rang and he answered it. His man on the ground. Some fellow cop had found out too much and had been taken out. Plato didn’t care. Collateral damage. Unimportant. Some other guy was sniffing around, too, and would have to be dealt with. An ex–military cop. Plato didn’t care about that, either. Unimportant. Not his problem.
But then, finally, the big news: The witness was dead.
Plato smiled.
He said, “You just saved a life.”
Then he made a call of his own. Brooklyn, New York. He announced the news. The last obstacle had been removed. South Dakota was now definitively a trouble-free zone. The title was impregnable. Absolutely guaranteed. The Russian agreed to wire the money immediately. Plato listened hard and imagined he heard the click of the mouse.
He smiled again.
A done deal.
He closed his phone and looked out his window. Seat 1A, the best on the plane. His plane. He looked down at America spread out below. Dark and massive. Strings of lights. He checked his watch. Fifty-seven more minutes. Then, once again, and as always, show time. Another challenge. Another triumph.
Reacher went upstairs and found Janet Salter’s bedroom. It was at the back of the house, directly above the library. It was a pleasant, fragrant room that smelled of talcum powder and lavender. Its bathroom was directly above half of the kitchen. There was a medicine cabinet above the sink. In it was an array of basic toiletry items, plus the box of .38 ammunition, eighty-eight rounds remaining of the original hundred.
Reacher put the box in his coat pocket and closed the mirror. He went back down the stairs and stepped into the library and stood over Janet Salter and moved her book and one soft arm and took her gun out of her cardigan pocket. It was still fully loaded. It had not been fired. He put it in his own pocket and replaced the book and the arm and stepped away.
The cop who had killed the lawyer and the Deputy Chief and Mrs. Salter sat in his car and stared out the windshield. He was in his designated position on the makeshift perimeter, personally responsible for the eighth of a mile of snow on his left and the eighth of a mile of snow on his right. Not that any escaper would use anything except the road, even in summer. In any season the terrain was too flat and featureless for concealment. The dogs would run him down in a minute. Going cross-country and hiding in ditches and culverts was strictly for the kind of old black and white chain-gang movie that gets shown late at night on the minor satellite channels. No, these days any sane fugitive would come straight down the road, strapped to the chassis of an empty delivery truck.
Not that there actually was a fugitive. Plato had been clear about that. There were all kinds of voids in the prison architecture. Overhead plenum chambers where ducts branched, underfloor matrixes where pipes split. All kinds of inspection panels. All perfectly safe, because none of the voids actually led anywhere. But useful for purposes short of an actual break-out. A sandwich and a bottle to pee in, a guy could hold out ten or twelve hours.
Which would be enough.
The cop checked his guns. Habit. Instinct. First his official piece, in his holster, and then his other piece, in his pocket. Loaded. A round in the chamber, and fourteen more in the magazine.
He wouldn’t need the fourteen in the magazine.
Reacher took one last careful tour through Janet Salter’s house. He was fairly sure he wouldn’t be coming back to it, and there were certain things he needed to fix in his mind. He looked at the front door, the back door, the basement door, the kitchen, the hallway, the library, Janet Salter’s position in it, and the book on her lap. Somewhere bet
ween five and eight minutes, he thought, for her to get as comfortable as she looked, given that she had been starting out from a state of extreme panic. It would have taken her that kind of time to relax, even in the safe and reassuring company of a trusted figure like a town cop.
So, allowing a minute’s margin for her protective detail to clear the area, someone had been between six and nine minutes late to the roll call up at the prison.
Someone would remember.
Maybe.
If there had been a roll call at all.
If the guy had even gone.
Reacher zipped his coat and jammed his hat down over his ears and covered it with his hood. Put his gloves on, opened the front door, and stepped out once again into the cold. It crowded in on him, battered at him, tormented him, froze him. But he ignored it. An act of will. He closed the door and walked down the driveway and made the turns and headed back toward the station. He stayed vigilant all the way, right up there in the kind of hyper-alert zone that made him feel he could draw and fire a thousand times faster than any opponent. The kind of zone that made him feel he could mine the ore and smelt the metal and draw the blueprint and cast the parts and build his own gun, all before any opponent got the drop on him.
I’m not afraid of death.
Death’s afraid of me.
Fear into aggression.
Guilt into aggression.
The police station was completely deserted apart from the civilian aide back on duty behind the reception counter. He was a tall creaky individual about seventy years old. He was sitting glumly on his stool. Reacher asked for the news. The guy said there wasn’t any. Reacher asked how long the department would stay deployed. The guy said he didn’t know. The department had no experience of such a thing. There had never been an escape before.
“There was no escape tonight,” Reacher said. “The guy is hiding out inside.”
“That’s your opinion?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Based on what?”
“Common sense,” Reacher said.
“Then I should think they’ll give it another hour or so. The perimeter is a mile out. Two hours is long enough to decide the guy is already through, or maybe not coming at all.”