by Lee Child
I asked, ‘Did your sister ever mention Sansom?’
He said, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Did she know him?’
‘I can’t see how.’
I asked, ‘What did she do for a living?’
He wouldn’t tell me.
TWELVE
He didn’t need to tell me. I already knew enough for a ballpark guess. Her fingerprints were on file and three shiny pink ex-staff officers had hustled up the highway but had left again within minutes. Which put Susan Mark somewhere in the defence business, but not in an elevated position. And she lived in Annandale, Virginia. Southwest of Arlington, as I recalled. Probably changed since I was last there. But probably still a decent place to live, and still an easy commute to the world’s largest office building. Route 244, one end to the other.
‘She worked at the Pentagon,’ I said.
Jake said, ‘She wasn’t supposed to talk about her job.’
I shook my head. ‘If it was really a secret, she would have told you she worked at Wal-Mart.’
He didn’t answer. I said, ‘I had an office in the Pentagon once. I’m familiar with the place. Try me.’
He paused a beat and then he shrugged and said, ‘She was a civilian clerk. But she made it sound exciting. She worked for an outfit called CGUSAHRC. She never told me much about it. She made it sound like a hush-hush thing. People can’t talk so much now, after the Twin Towers.’
‘It’s not an outfit,’ I said. ‘It’s a guy. CGUSAHRC means Commanding General, United States Army, Human Resources Command. And it’s not very exciting. It’s a personnel department. Paperwork and records.’
Jake didn’t reply. I thought I had offended him, by belittling his sister’s career. Maybe the Rucker seminar hadn’t taught me enough. Maybe I should have paid more attention. The silence went on a beat too long and grew awkward. I asked, ‘Did she tell you anything about it at all?’
‘Not really. Maybe there wasn’t much to tell.’ He said it with a hint of bitterness, as if his sister had been caught in a lie.
I said, ‘People dress things up, Jake. It’s human nature. And usually there’s no harm in it. Maybe she just wanted to compete, with you being a cop.’
‘We weren’t close.’
‘You were still family.’
‘I guess.’
‘Did she enjoy her job?’
‘She seemed to. And it must have suited her. She had the right skills, for a records department. Great memory, meticulous, very organized. She was good with computers.’
The silence came back. I started to think about Annandale again. A pleasant but unremarkable community. A dormitory, basically. Under the present circumstances it had just one significant characteristic.
It was a very long way from New York City.
She wasn’t an unhappy person.
Jake said, ‘What?’
I said, ‘Nothing. None of my business.’
‘But what?’
‘Just thinking.’
‘About what?’
There’s more than meets the eye.
I asked, ‘How long have you been a cop?’
‘Eighteen years.’
‘All in the same place?’
‘I trained with the State Troopers. Then I moved over. Like a farm system.’
‘Have you seen many suicides in Jersey?’
‘One or two a year, maybe.’
‘Anyone see any of them coming?’
‘Not really. They’re usually a big surprise.’
‘Like this one.’
‘You got that right.’
‘But behind each one of them there must have been a reason.’
‘Always. Financial, sexual, some kind of shit about to hit the fan.’
‘So your sister must have had a reason.’
‘I don’t know what.’
I went quiet again. Jake said, ‘Just say it. Tell me.’
‘Not my place.’
‘You were a cop,’ he said. ‘You’re seeing something.’
I nodded. Said, ‘My guess is that out of the suicides you’ve seen, maybe seven out of ten happened at home, and three out of ten, they drove to some local lane and hitched up the hosepipe.’
‘More or less.’
‘But always somewhere familiar. Somewhere quiet and alone. Always at some kind of a destination. You get there, you compose yourself, you do it.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that I never heard of a suicide where the person travels hundreds of miles from home and does it while the journey is still in progress.’
‘I told you.’
‘You told me she didn’t kill herself. But she did. I saw her do it. But I’m saying she did it in a very unconventional manner. In fact I don’t think I ever heard of a suicide inside a subway car before. Under one, maybe, but not inside. Did you ever hear of a suicide on public transportation, during the ride?’
‘So?’
‘So nothing. I’m just asking, that’s all.’
‘Why?’
‘Because. Think like a cop, Jake. Not like a brother. What do you do when something is way out of line?’
‘You dig deeper.’
‘So do it.’
‘It won’t bring her back.’
‘But understanding a thing helps a lot.’ Which was also a concept they taught at Fort Rucker. But not in the psychology class.
* * *
I got a refill of coffee and Jacob Mark picked up a packet of sugar and turned it over and over in his fingers so that the powder fell from one end of the paper rectangle to the other, repeatedly, like in an hourglass. I could see his head working like a cop and his heart working like a brother. It was all right there in his face. Dig deeper. It won’t bring her back.
He asked, ‘What else?’
‘There was a passenger who took off before the NYPD got to him.’
‘Who?’
‘Just a guy. The cops figured he didn’t want his name in the system. They figured he was maybe cheating on his wife.’
‘Possible.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Possible.’
‘And?’
‘Both the feds and the private guys asked me if your sister had handed me anything.’
‘What kind of anything?’
‘They didn’t specify. I’m guessing something small.’
‘Who were the feds?’
‘They wouldn’t say.’
‘Who were the private guys?’
I hitched up off the bench and took the business card out my back pocket. Cheap stock, already creased, and already rubbed a little blue from my jeans. New pants, fresh dye. I put it on the table and reversed it and slid it across. Jake read it slowly, maybe twice. Sure and Certain, Inc. Protection, Investigation, Intervention. The telephone number. He took out a cell and dialled. I heard a delay and a chirpy little three-note ding-dong tone and a recorded message. Jake closed his phone and said, ‘Not in service. Phony number.’
THIRTEEN
I took a second refill of coffee. Jake just stared at the waitress like he had never heard of the concept. Eventually she lost interest and moved away. Jake slid the business back to me. I picked it up and put it in my pocket and he said, ‘I don’t like this.’
I said, ‘I wouldn’t like it, either.’
‘We should go back and talk to the NYPD.’
‘She killed herself, Jake. That’s the bottom line. That’s all they need to know. They don’t care how or where or why.’
‘They should.’
‘Maybe so. But they don’t. Would you?’
‘Probably not,’ he said. I saw his eyes go blank. Maybe he was re-running old cases in his head. Big houses, leafy roads, lawyers living the high life on their clients’ escrow money, unable to make good, ducking out ahead of shame and scandal and disbarment. Or teachers, with pregnant students. Or family men, with boyfriends in Chelsea or the West Village. The local cops, full of tact and rough sympathy, large and
intrusive in the neat quiet dwelling, checking the scenes, establishing the facts, typing reports, closing files, forgetting, moving on to the next thing, not caring how or where or why.
He said, ‘You got a theory?’
I said, ‘It’s too early for a theory. All we got so far is facts.’
‘What facts?’
‘The Pentagon didn’t entirely trust your sister.’
‘That’s a hell of a thing to say.’
‘She was on a watch list, Jake. She must have been. As soon as her name hit the wires, those feds saddled up. Three of them. That was a procedure.’
‘They didn’t stay long.’
I nodded. ‘Which means they weren’t very suspicious. They were being cautious, that’s all. Maybe they had some small thing on their minds, hut they didn’t really believe it. They came up here to rule it out.’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Information,’ I said. ‘That’s all the Human Resources Command has got.’
‘They thought she was passing information?’
‘They wanted to rule it out.’
‘Which means at some point they must have ruled it in.’
I nodded again. ‘Maybe she was seen in the wrong office, opening the wrong file cabinet. Maybe they figured there was an innocent explanation, but they wanted to be sure. Or maybe something went missing and they didn’t know who to watch, so they were watching them all.’
‘What kind of information?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Like a copied file?’
‘Smaller,’ I said. ‘A folded note, a computer memory. Something that could be passed from hand to hand in a subway car.’
‘She was a patriot. She loved her country. She wouldn’t do that.’
‘And she didn’t do that. She didn’t pass anything to anyone.’
‘So we’ve got nothing.’
‘We’ve got your sister hundreds of miles from home with a loaded gun.’
‘And afraid,’ Jake said.
‘Wearing a winter jacket in ninety-degree weather.’
‘With two names floating around,’ he said. ‘John Sansom and Lila Hoth, whoever the hell she is. And Hoth sounds foreign.’
‘So did Markakis, once upon a time.’
He went quiet again and I sipped coffee. Traffic was getting slower on Eighth. The morning rush was building. The sun was up, a little south of east. Its rays were not aligned with the street grid. They came in at a low angle and threw long diagonal shadows.
Jake said, ‘Give me somewhere to start.’
I said, ‘We don’t know enough.’
‘Speculate.’
‘I can’t. I could make up a story, but it would be full of holes. And it might be completely the wrong story to begin with.’
‘Try it. Give me something. Like brainstorming.’
I shrugged. ‘You ever met any ex-Special Forces guys?’
‘Two or three. Maybe four or five, counting the Troopers I knew.’
‘You probably didn’t. Most Special Forces careers never happened. It’s like people who claim to have been at Woodstock. Believe them all, the crowd must have been ten million strong. Like New Yorkers who saw the planes hit the towers. They all did, to listen to them. No one was looking the wrong way at the time. People who say they were Special Forces are usually bullshitting. Most of them never made it out of the infantry. Some of them were never in the army at all. People dress things up.’
‘Like my sister.’
‘It’s human nature.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘I’m working with what we’ve got. We’ve got two random names, and election season starting up, and your sister in HRC.’
‘You think John Sansom is lying about his past?’
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘But it’s a common area of exaggeration. And politics is a dirty business. You can bet that right now someone is checking on the guy who did Sansom’s dry-cleaning twenty years ago, wanting to know if he had a green card. So it’s a no-brainer to assume that people are fact-checking his actual biography. It’s a national sport.’
‘So maybe Lila Hoth is a journalist. Or a researcher. Cable news, or something. Or talk radio.’
‘Maybe she’s Sansom’s opponent.’
‘Not with a name like that. Not in North Carolina.’
‘OK, let’s say she’s a journalist or a researcher. Maybe she put the squeeze on an HRC clerk for Sansom’s service record. Maybe she picked your sister.’
‘Where was her leverage?’
I said, ‘That’s the first big hole in the story.’ Which it was. Susan Mark had been desperate and terrified. It was hard to imagine a journalist finding that kind of leverage. Journalists can be manipulative and persuasive, but no one is particularly afraid of them.
‘Was Susan political?’ I asked.
‘Why?’
‘Maybe she didn’t like Sansom. Didn’t like what he stood for. Maybe she was cooperating. Or volunteering.’
‘Then why would she be so scared?’
‘Because she was breaking the law,’ I said. ‘Her heart would have been in her mouth.’
‘And why was she carrying the gun?’
‘Didn’t she normally carry it?’
‘Never. It was an heirloom. She kept it in her sock drawer, like people do.’
I shrugged. The gun was the second big hole in the story. People take their guns out of their sock drawers for a variety of reasons. Protection, aggression. But never just in case they feel a spur of the moment impulse to off themselves far from home.
Jake said, ‘Susan wasn’t very political.’
‘OK.’
‘Therefore there can’t be a connection with Sansom.’
‘Then why did his name come up?’
‘I don’t know.’
I said, ‘Susan must have driven up. Can’t take a gun on a plane. Her car is probably getting towed right now. She must have come through the Holland Tunnel and parked way downtown.
Jake didn’t reply. My coffee was cold. The waitress had given up on refills. We were an unprofitable table. The rest of the clientele had changed twice over. Working people, moving fast, filling up, getting ready for a busy day. I pictured Susan Mark twelve hours earlier, getting ready for a busy night. Dressing, finding her father’s gun, loading it, packing it into the black bag. Climbing into her car, taking 236 to the Beltway, going clockwise, maybe getting gas, hitting 95, heading north, eyes wide and desperate, drilling the darkness ahead.
Speculate, Jake had said. But suddenly I didn’t want to. Because I could hear Theresa Lee in my head. The detective. You tipped her over the edge. Jake saw me thinking and asked, ‘What?’
‘Let’s assume the leverage,’ I said. ‘Let’s assume it was totally compelling. So let’s assume Susan was on her way to deliver whatever information she was told to get. And let’s assume these are bad people. She didn’t trust them to release whatever hold they had over her. Probably she thought they were going to up the stakes and ask for more. She was in, and she didn’t see a way of getting out. And above all, she was very afraid of them. So she was desperate. So she took the gun. Possibly she thought she could fight her way out, but she wasn’t optimistic about her chances. All in all, she didn’t think things were going to end well.’
‘So?’
‘She had business to attend to. She was almost there. She never intended to shoot herself.’
‘But what about the list? The behaviours?’
‘Same difference,’ I said. ‘She was on the way to where she expected someone else to end her life, maybe some other way, either literally or figuratively.’
FOURTEEN
Jacob Mark said, ‘It doesn’t explain the coat.’ But I thought he was wrong. I thought it explained the coat pretty well. And it explained the fact that she parked downtown and rode up on the subway. I figured she was looking to come upon whoever she was meeting from an unexpected angle, out of a hole in the ground, arm
ed, dressed all in black, ready for some conflict in the dark. Maybe the winter parka was the only black coat she owned.
And it explained everything else, too. The dread, the sense of doom. Maybe the mumbling had been her way of rehearsing pleas, or exculpations, or arguments, or maybe even threats. Maybe repeating them over and over again had made them more convincing to her. More plausible. More reassuring.
Jake said, ‘She can’t have been on her way to deliver something, because she didn’t have anything with her.’
‘She might have had something,’ I said. ‘In her head. You told me she had a great memory. Units, dates, lime lines, whatever they needed.’
He paused, and tried to find a reason to disagree.
He failed.
‘Classified information,’ he said. ‘Army secrets. Jesus, I can’t believe it.’
‘She was under pressure, Jake.’
‘What kind of secrets does a personnel deparment have anyway, that are worth getting killed for?’
I didn’t answer. Because I had no idea. In my day HRC had been called PERSCOM. Personnel Command, not Human Resources Command. I had served thirteen years without ever thinking about it. Not even once. Paperwork and records. All the interesting information had been somewhere else.
Jake moved in his seat. He ran his fingers through his unwashed hair and clamped his palms on his ears and moved his head through a complete oval, like he was easing stiffness in his neck, or acting out some kind of inner turmoil that was bringing him full circle, back to his most basic question.
He said, ‘So why? Why did she just up and kill herself before she got where she was going?’
I paused a beat. Café noises went on all around us. The squeak of sneakers on linoleum, the clink and scrape of crockery, the sound of TV news from sets high on the walls, the ding of the short-order bell.
‘She was breaking the law,’ I said. ‘She was in breach of all kinds of trusts and professional obligations. And she must have detected some kind of surveillance. Maybe she had even been warned. So she was tense, right from the moment she got in her car. All the way up she was watching for red lights in her mirror. Every cop at every toll was a potential danger. Every guy she saw in a suit could have been a federal agent. And on the train, any in of us could have been getting ready to bust her.’