by Diane Capri
“Did I?” I cocked my head and frowned a little and resisted the urge to glare at him. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. Carlos is right. I meant to say it’s Jack Reacher who is being considered for the job, not Joe Reacher.” I shrugged and offered an apologetic smile. “Their names are so similar and I’ve never met either of them.”
“Don’t worry. I understand. They were somewhat interchangeable to me, too. They looked a lot alike. If you met one brother in the dark, you could easily believe he was the other one. And their names are similar though of course everyone called Jack ‘Reacher.’ I asked Joe why once, and he said that’s just the way it always was. Even their mother called him ‘Reacher.’” She gave a little laugh. “I really can’t imagine that, can you? Why would she have started doing that?”
I shrugged as though I couldn’t say. Because it was news to me. Interesting to hear that the brothers were almost interchangeable in appearance. I wondered if that was what got Joe Reacher killed. Had Jack been the intended victim? I put that question on my mental checklist for later.
“Anyway, the two of them were very close. They’d never been separated until Joe went to West Point. Two years later, when Jack joined Joe there, they hung out together often. It would be easy to get them confused.”
“So, Jack Reacher, then,” I said, settling in and smiling as if we were girlfriends about to dish. “Let’s start with when you knew him and how.”
She moved deeper into the loveseat and relaxed a little more. She tilted her head back and took a breath as if she were thinking about a long ago experience that she enjoyed very much. Maybe she was.
“I was eighteen, but I guess I was still a senior in high school when I first met Joe. He was at West Point with a neighborhood boy, Matthew Clifton.” Her tone was wistful, pleasant. “And then I met Jack later. When I went to West Point to see Joe.”
“You and Joe must have been good friends.” I nodded like an understanding girlfriend would do.
“Oh! I thought you knew.” She laughed. The sound was light, easy. Not the least bit guarded. “Joe was my first love. He and I were married. It only lasted less than six months. But we stayed friends after that.”
I arched my eyebrows and widened my eyes. “I see.”
“I was too young and my parents were opposed. Of course, at the time, I thought they were being so unreasonable.” She laughed again. “But when Joe graduated West Point, he planned to serve in the Army and then move on to another agency. Well, even back then I knew I didn’t want to be an Army wife. I would never have been any good at that. Joe was disappointed. He was the kind of guy who committed himself to everything and never gave up when there were problems, you know?”
“So you divorced?” Gaspar asked.
“Well, we got married because I was pregnant and Joe insisted he had to take care of me. Joe was like that. He always wanted to take care of everybody.” She cocked her head and seemed to be thinking about that time. She frowned a little and took a deep breath. “And after my miscarriage, I guess a lot of things just hit home to me. I was too young to be a mother then and once the baby was gone…. It just gave me a chance to reconsider, I guess.”
Gaspar’s spine straightened. “What about Joe? How did he feel about all of this?” His tone bore heavy disapproval. He’d be gutted if Marie left him or if he lost his kids. He might not survive it.
Lesley must have sensed his meaning because she dropped her gaze and took another deep breath before she raised it again. “I don’t think Joe was ready to be a father, either. He said he was ready and I was proud of him for wanting to take care of me and the baby.” She paused a couple of beats. “We were too young. At least, I was. But we stayed friends for a long time. Joe called occasionally. Cards at birthdays and holidays, you know.” She paused and then, wistful again, repeated herself: “I would like to see him again.”
I let that comment pass because I didn’t want to get into any conversation about how Joe Reacher died on a lonely road in the middle of nowhere fifteen years ago. Nor did I want to deal with her reactions. Instead, I asked, “And Jack Reacher? What can you tell us about him?”
She smiled again, livelier now. “Reacher was a whole different kettle of fish.”
“How is that?” Gaspar phrased it like he really wanted to know.
“He was smart like Joe. He was a whiz with numbers. And he had an amazing ability to know the time, even though he never wore a watch. Like a savant or something. He didn’t talk much. The strong, silent type, I guess. He did well in school, too. But his skills were well, shall we say more physical in nature?” Her grin widened. Probably remembering some sort of trouble Jack had started or finished. “When he went straight into the Army and joined the MPs, I know Joe felt Reacher had made the right choice. Joe said if I was ever in trouble, I should call Reacher because he would always do what he believed was the right thing.”
“And Joe wasn’t as physical as Jack?” Because Joe was Army all the way. He had served in Military Intelligence. A soft-hearted man would never have made those choices in the first place. And he’d have washed out early if he’d mistakenly done so, instead of developing Joe Reacher’s impressive record.
She laughed. “Oh, Joe was no weenie or anything. He was as tough as any guy. Sometimes a little too quick to square off when he was pushed. Sometimes he shoved back a little too hard. Sure.”
As I suspected. I nodded to encourage her, but she didn’t elaborate.
Gaspar asked, “When was the last time you saw either Jack or Joe Reacher?”
“For Joe, let me see.” Lesley looked at the ceiling a moment, considering. “It was a couple of years after Josephine died. Their mother.”
“Did you know her?” I asked.
“Not really. I never met her, actually.” Lesley shook her head. “She was briefly my mother-in-law and she was over the moon when she learned I was pregnant, Joe said. I talked to her on the phone a couple of times. She had a lovely French accent. I liked her and I think she never forgave me for divorcing Joe.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh, Joe all but said as much. As I said, we stayed in touch for a time. That woman was tough as nails. Her own marriage wasn’t the easiest, so she felt I gave up too soon and too easily. I think Joe was her favorite of the two boys, although she certainly loved them both and they loved her too. Joe said she was the glue that held their family together.” She paused again, lost in a memory. “He called me when he found out she had terminal cancer. He was very upset about it, but he said Reacher was taking it too stoically.”
I cocked my head. “What did he mean by that?” The emerging picture she was painting of Jack Reacher was fascinatingly different from what I’d heard from every source before. Different, too, from his Army record, which was all I had to go on. Maybe the years had changed him, as Master Sergeant Jones had said back at Fort Bird yesterday, but not for the better.
“Joe always said he had to look after Reacher, but he said Reacher has the strength of two men and thinks he’s the one who protects Joe. Once Joe told me that if anything ever happened to him, he didn’t know what Reacher would do. I’m sure Reacher felt at least that strongly about Josephine. I know Joe did.” She opened her hands and rested one on each knee. “Like I said, those boys were very close. Two peas in a pod. Josephine died a few days after that and Joe called to tell me about the funeral. I wanted to go, but it was in Paris. That’s where she lived.”
“And Jack,” I said. “When did you last see him?”
“I don’t know.” She cocked her head again and thought about it a while. “Maybe five years ago?” That set my body humming like a tuning fork. If Lesley noticed my reaction, she didn’t let on. “It was after he left the Army because I remember telling him how shocked I was. The Army had seemed such a perfect fit for him, you know? He was really well suited to the work.”
“So. About five years ago, where did you see him?”
“I was at a conference with m
y husband in East L.A. It was the strangest thing because I saw Reacher on the street. He was older, but otherwise just the same as I remembered. Huge. Fit. Hands the size of baseball mitts. He picked me up and hugged me tight and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to breathe ever again.” She laughed briefly at the memory and then she frowned. “He looked like a hobo, though. He was wearing civilian clothes that didn’t fit him very well like he’d bought them off the rack at a farm goods store or something. Terrible haircut. I thought maybe he was having financial problems.”
“Did you ask him about that?” Gaspar’s ears perked up. Financial problems could and often did lead to crime.
“Well, no. That would have been rude, don’t you think?” She glanced at Gaspar and paused. She frowned in concentration. “He was meeting old Army friends, he said. We didn’t talk long. I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time with him that day, though because I never saw him again.”
“Did he give you a card or an address?”
It was an odd question to ask since we’d told her he applied for a job. Not many people would be considered for a sensitive government job without a permanent residence. But she didn’t hesitate before she replied. “I’m afraid not.”
“You’ve been very helpful, Ma’am,” Gaspar said. “We’ve taken up enough of your time.” He stood and buttoned his jacket. “But if we need anything more, can we contact you again?”
“Of course. Please give my best to Reacher and Joe. And tell them to come by.” She stood and straightened the wrinkles from her slacks, then smiled at us each in turn. “I’d love to catch up with them both.”
She walked us to the front door.
“This is a lovely home you have here,” Gaspar said, looking around. “What kind of work does your husband do?”
“Thomas? He’s a defense contractor. Years ago, he was in the Army before we married. JAG Corps. Now his company produces unmanned tank systems and drones for the military.”
Gaspar pushed his hands into his pockets. “Thomas’s last name is what, again?”
“Same as mine now. O’Connor.”
“How did you meet him?”
“I have Joe Reacher to thank for that, too. After Joe and I divorced, I thought I’d never fall in love again. And I didn’t, for years.” She smiled again and brushed her hair away from her face. She opened the door and the cold air rushed inside. “But Joe and I stayed friends and in one of those quirky twists of fate, Joe was the one who introduced me to Thomas. Now I have Thomas and the girls and it’s all worked out. Everything always does, don’t you think?”
CHAPTER 19
We got into the Crown Vic and headed back the way we came. We sat with our thoughts for a while. He wasn’t much of a small talker, which suited me fine. About halfway back to the Nashville airport, he said, “Are you going to call or should I?”
He meant that one of us was going to have to open the padded envelopes in the back seat and fire up the Boss’s cell phones. The phones were tracking us now, no doubt. But if I wanted an appointment with General Matthew Clifton on the base at Fort Herald in Dallas—and if I didn’t before, I certainly did now—I’d need some heavy-duty help to make that happen.
The Boss could easily pave the way if he was so inclined. The FBI can go just about anywhere these days. And Gaspar was an Army veteran with a veteran’s card, which sometimes allowed him access to military installations without prior notice, depending on the threat level each day. But it made no sense to travel all the way to Dallas before solving the administrative issues.
The other option was to accept Major Tony Clifton’s offer to intercede with his brother for us. Gaspar’s question meant that he had considered Tony as an option and rejected it.
“There’s an exit up ahead. Let’s stop for coffee,” I replied, which was a way to let him know I wanted to discuss the options away from the Boss’s ears and before we went any further.
Gaspar glanced at me and returned his gaze to the road. “Whatever you say.”
We never assumed we were truly under the radar. Usually, someone was watching and listening and manipulating. Usually, that was the Boss, but other eyes and ears were on us, too. Some of them, we were by now well convinced, were connected to Reacher. When we wanted privacy, evasive maneuvers were required.
Listening to conversations in the open air is doable, but it’s harder than monitoring inside a vehicle. Roadside restaurants are typically busy. There would be lots of conflicting cell phone traffic. It was complicated to isolate particular conversations amid dozens of others and it required extra time, more equipment. Which gave us small windows of privacy when we could manage to immerse ourselves in crowds.
At the next exit, Gaspar chose a parking lot surrounded by a clump of restaurants, gas stations and a strip mall knotted together by concrete. He parked the Crown Vic in one of the lot’s busier areas. We left our personal cell phones in the car, too, and walked fifty yards away before either of us spoke again.
Gaspar’s limp slowed us down, but we weren’t headed anywhere in particular so it didn’t matter. He had popped at least two Tylenol already when he thought I wasn’t looking.
“We can agree that Tony Clifton sent us to Lesley Browning for a reason.” His voice held a question although the words did not. “Did you hear the reason from her?”
“Not exactly. But the connection is there,” I said. “Jack and Joe Reacher and Joe’s ex, Lesley Browning, were all connected to General Matthew and Major Tony Clifton because they were all friends. They lived in the same neighborhood and the four men went to West Point. Colonel Summer was connected to Jack Reacher and Tony Clifton because she worked with them both.”
“Summer was connected to Matthew Clifton, too. Because she’d worked with him prosecuting the events in the old JAG report, if nothing else. Senior officers are a small and exclusive club. They all know each other.”
I smiled. He really was beginning to understand how I think. Which was a little scary, but more convenient than having to explain all the time. “And how about Lesley’s husband?”
He gave me the side-eye. “Possible. We know Thomas O’Connor signed off on that old corruption case as the junior JAG with Matthew Clifton. But he’s been out of the Army for a long time.”
“Chico, in my book, being a defense contractor is not being out of the Army.” He raised an eyebrow. “The Army is his one and only customer. You’ve never worked as a civilian and I have. I’m here to tell you, customers are king.”
We walked and he thought about it a bit. “Let’s say you’re right. Where are you going with this?”
I’d been hunched into my blazer and now took a deep breath and stretched the tension from my shoulders. “I think I’m still going to Fort Herald. But the question is whether we should go to O’Connor’s office before or after.”
“Cuts down on the plane travel if we do it now.”
“Exactly.”
“Are you going to tell him?” He meant the Boss.
“He already knows. The question is why he wants us to interview O’Connor. What he wants us to find out that he doesn’t already know.”
We turned and walked back toward the car.
“You get the coffee and I’ll make the call,” Gaspar said.
“10-4,” I replied and he grinned.
I chose the busiest of the fast food joints and the longest line waiting to order.
Gaspar could bring the Boss up to speed. I had no intention of joining any conversation with him just yet. The man was using me as a gun dog to serve some purpose he refused to disclose. More than once, his secrets had almost gotten me killed, and Gaspar too. He showed zero remorse for that and zero interest in changing the dynamic. Which meant I had zero interest in chatting with him except when communication was essential.
I ran the events through my head again. Somehow Jack Reacher was at the center of this thing, whatever the thing actually was. He had not been to Fort Bird since 1990. Yet, one or more of his actions in the fe
w days he was there had caused ripples like dropping a stone into an ocean. Only Reacher’s effect was more like dropping a boulder into a puddle.
Motives for murder were not much debated in law enforcement circles. The FBI manual limited the options to four classes and a bunch of sub-classifications, but they boiled down to six motives: profit, revenge, jealousy, to conceal a crime, to avoid humiliation or disgrace, and homicidal mania. In the case of The Lucky Bar shooter, homicidal mania was the clear favorite. But it didn’t sit right with me. And the motive for killing Summer? Could have been any of the others.
My turn at the register finally came. I ordered black coffee for me and coffee with a quart of cream and half a cup of sugar for Gaspar. I added a couple of fried apple pies and paid the bill and carried the paper bag toward the Crown Vic.
The thing that I’d been worrying around in my head since The Lucky Bar shootout was a single question: What could Reacher have possibly done that would cause a long-dormant situation to erupt into murder all these years later?
The answer teased me like a mouse hiding in the dark. I could hear it scurrying around, but every time I turned on the light, I couldn’t find it. All I saw was evidence that the mouse had been there.
CHAPTER 20
When I returned to the car and we’d divided the gourmet meal, Gaspar reported. “He says he’ll arrange the meeting. He’ll call back when it’s scheduled.”
I shrugged, took a bite of my apple pie, and hauled out my laptop.
After a few minutes work with the court-martial report and Internet searches, I found the information for the second JAG officer. Thomas O’Connor, Lesley’s husband. His current employer was Dynamic Defense Systems, located south of Nashville. I programmed the address into the GPS and Gaspar pointed the Crown Vic in the right direction.
We had both read the old JAG court-martial report. Even on the surface, the situation was bad. Three senior officers convicted of crimes serious enough to have carried the death penalty.