by Lee Child
“I’m going to Sacramento, my friend,” he said. “But if you want the Bay, I can let you off in Stockton.”
Penney shook his head, vigorously.
“Sacramento is great,” he shouted. “Thank you very much.”
He put his right hand on the windshield frame and his left hand on the seatback and swung himself inside exactly like he’d done with Jeeps in Vietnam.
“You just lay back and look at the scenery, my friend,” the driver shouted over the muffler noise. “Talking is not an option in this old thing. Too loud, you know what I mean?”
James Penney nodded gratefully at him and the old hippy let in the clutch and roared off down the road.
—
The Laney County Medical Examiner’s Office was just that, an office, and a fairly rudimentary one. There were no facilities for postmortem examination, unless Kolek wanted to clear his own desk and slice the carbonized lump open all over it. So he had taken the body bag down to the facility the county used over in northern Los Angeles. It was a big modern morgue, well equipped, and busy. It was busy because it sucked in all the business from the ring of small counties surrounding it, as well as handling its own substantial quota of unfortunates. So Kolek had parked the bag in the cold store and signed up for the first free visitor slot of the day, which was mid-afternoon. It was a half-hour slot, but Kolek figured that was going to be more than long enough. Not a hell of a lot of doubt about how Penney had died. All that was left was a routine ID through the dental data.
Laney itself had one dentist, serving the population of two thousand people. He had never seen Penney. But he was reasonably new, and the sheriff said it wasn’t unusual for Laney people to forget about their teeth. The factory gave health insurance, of course, but not the best in the world, and dentistry required a contribution. But the surgery nurse was a stout old woman who had been there through three separate tenures. She went through the system and found the Penney file where it had been stored after his last visit, twelve years before. It was a thin packet of notes and film in a buff envelope. Kolek signed for it and threw it into the back seat of his wagon. Checked his watch and headed south for the morgue.
—
James Penney got out of the old hippy’s Jeep right on the main drag into the southern edge of Sacramento, windblown, tired, ears ringing from the noise. He stood by the side of the road and waved and watched the guy go, waving back, long gray hair blowing in the slipstream. Then he looked around in the sudden silence and took his bearings. All the way up and down the drag he could see a forest of signs, bright colors, neon, advertising motels, air and pool and cable, burger places, eateries of every description, supermarkets, auto parts. Looked like the kind of place a guy could get lost in, no trouble at all. Big choice of motels, all side by side, all competing, all offering the lowest prices in town. He walked down to level with three of them. Figured he’d use the middle one. Hole up and plan ahead.
But then he decided to try something he’d read about once in a travel guide. Check in late, and ask for an even lower price. Late in the day, the motel would be keen to rent another room. They’d figure something is better than nothing, right? That was the theory in the travel guide. It was a theory he’d never tried, but now was the time to start. So he went straight out for a late lunch or an early dinner or whatever it was time for. He chose a burger chain he’d never used before and sat in the window, idly watching the traffic. The waitress came over and he ordered a cheeseburger and two Cokes. He was dry from the dust on the road.
—
The forty-year-old leftover hippy with the long graying hair drove on downtown and parked the dusty and dented Jeep right up against a hydrant outside the Sacramento Police Department’s main building. He pulled the keys and stepped out. Stood and stretched in the warmth of the afternoon sun before ducking inside.
The Drug Enforcement Agency’s Sacramento office was located in a suite of rooms lent to them by the police department. The only way in was through the precinct hall, past the desk sergeants. Agents had to sign in and out. They had to collect internal ID badges to wear inside the building, and they had to leave them there on their way out. Two reasons for that. They tended to look more like criminals than agents, and the badges kept confusion inside the station house to a minimum. And because they were working undercover, they couldn’t afford to slip their IDs into their pockets, absentmindedly or by mistake, and walk out like that. If they did, and they got searched by whatever new friends they were trying to make, there could be some very bad consequences. So the strict rule was the IDs stayed at the precinct house desk, every moment the agents weren’t actually inside and wearing them.
The forty-year-old hippy lined up to sign in and collect his badge. He was behind a couple of uniforms with some guy in handcuffs. One desk sergeant on duty. A wait. He scanned the bulletins on the back wall. High risk of forest fire. Missing children. Then a face stared out at him. An APB Teletype. James Penney. Laney, California. Arson and criminal damage.
“Shit,” he said. Loudly.
The desk sergeant and the cops with the cuffed guy all turned to look at him.
“That guy,” he said. “James Penney. I just drove him all the way over here through the mountains.”
—
The sheriff in Laney took the call from Sacramento. He was busy closing out the files on the previous day’s activity. The DWIs, the broken windows, the smashed windshield, the small stuff. The Penney file was already in the drawer, just waiting for Kolek’s formal ID to tie it up.
“Penney?” he said to the Sacramento desk sergeant. “No, he’s dead. Crashed and burned on the road out to Vegas, last night.”
Then he hung up, but he was a conscientious guy, and cautious, so he found the number for the morgue down in LA. He was stretching his hand out for the phone when it rang again. It was Kolek, calling on his mobile, straight from the dissecting table.
“What?” the sheriff asked, although he already knew what from Kolek’s voice.
“Two main problems,” Kolek said. “The teeth are nowhere near. Penney had a bridge across the front. Cheap dentures. These are real teeth.”
“And?” the sheriff asked. “What else?”
“This is a woman,” Kolek said.
—
Penney had finished his meal in the Sacramento burger shack when he saw the four police cruisers arrive. He had a dollar on the table for the waitress and was getting up, ready to leave. He had actually lifted off the sticky vinyl bench and was sliding out sideways when he caught sight of them. Four cruisers, playing leapfrog along the strip of motels. The cops were going into each office in turn, a sheaf of papers in their hands, coming out, sliding along to the next office. Penney sat back down. Stared out at them through the window. Watched them leapfrog south until they were out of sight. Then he stood up and left. Turned up the collar on his leather jacket and walked north, not quickly, not slowly, holding his breath.
—
The Laney sheriff was on the phone. He had tracked Penney to his bank. He was aware of the big cash withdrawal yesterday. He had looked at the road on the map, Laney to Mojave, and he’d guessed correctly about the northward dash along the flank of Mount Whitney. He’d called gas stations, one after the other, working north through the phone book, until he found a pump jockey who remembered a red Firebird whose driver had paid from a thick wad of cash.
Then he’d done some mental arithmetic, speed and distance and time, and started calling a thin cluster of motels in the area he figured Penney had reached at the end of the day. Second number, he’d found the right place, the Pine Park Holiday Motel up near Yosemite. Penney had checked in at about nine o’clock, car and all, name and plate number right there on the desk guy’s carbon.
Beyond that, there was no further information. The sheriff called the nearest police department, ten miles south of the motel. No report of a stolen Firebird. No other missing automobiles. No knowledge of a woman car thief in the locality. So th
e sheriff called the Mojave General Motors dealership and asked for the value of an eighteen-month-old Firebird, clean, low-mileage. He added that amount to the bank’s figure for the cash withdrawal. Penney had rendezvoused at the motel and sold his car to the dead woman and was on the run with nearly fifteen grand in his pants pocket. A lot of money. It was clear. Obvious. Penney had planned, and prepared.
The sheriff opened his map again. The Sacramento sighting had been just plain luck. So now was the time to capitalize on it. He wouldn’t be aiming to stay there. Too small, state capital, too well policed. So he’d be moving on. Probably up to the wilds of Oregon or Washington State. Or Idaho or Montana. But not by plane. Not with cash. Paying cash for an air ticket out of a California city is the same thing as begging to be arrested for narcotics trafficking. So he’d be aiming to get out by road. But Sacramento was a city with an ocean not too far away to the left, and high mountains to the right. Fundamentally six roads out, was all. So six roadblocks would do it, maybe on a ten-mile radius so the local commuters wouldn’t get snarled up. The sheriff nodded to himself and picked up the phone to call the highway patrol.
—
It started raining in Sacramento at dusk. Steady, wetting rain. Northern California, near the mountains, very different from what Penney was used to. He was hunched in his jacket, head down, walking north, trying to decide if he dared hitch a ride. The police cruisers at the motel strip had unsettled him. He was tired and demoralized and alone. And wet. And conspicuous. Nobody walked anywhere in California. He glanced over his shoulder at the traffic stream and saw a dull olive Chevrolet sedan slowing behind him. It came to a stop and a long arm stretched across and opened the passenger door. The dome light clicked on and shone on the soaked roadway.
“Want a ride?” the driver called.
Penney ducked down and glanced inside. The driver was a very tall man, about thirty, muscular, built like a regular weightlifter. Short fair hair, rugged open face. Dressed in uniform. Army uniform. Penney read the insignia and registered: military police captain. He glanced at the dull olive paint on the car and saw a white serial number stenciled on the flank.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Get in out of the rain,” the driver said. “A vet like you knows better than to walk in the rain, right?”
Penney slid inside. Closed the door.
“How do you know I’m a vet?” he asked.
“The way you walk,” the driver said. “And your age, and the way you look. Guy your age looking like you look and walking in the rain didn’t beat the draft for college, that’s for damn sure.”
Penney nodded.
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I did a jungle tour, seventeen years ago.”
“So let me give you a ride,” the driver said. “A favor, one soldier to another. Consider it a veteran’s benefit.”
“OK,” Penney said.
“Where you headed?” the driver asked.
“I don’t know,” Penney said. “North, I guess.”
“OK, north it is,” the driver said. “I’m Jack Reacher. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Penney said nothing.
“You got a name?” the guy called Reacher asked.
Penney hesitated.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Reacher put the car in drive and glanced over his shoulder. Eased back into the traffic stream. Clicked the switch and locked the doors.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Do?” Penney repeated.
“You’re running,” Reacher said. “Heading out of town, walking in the rain, head down, no bag, don’t know what your name is. I’ve seen a lot of people running, and you’re one of them.”
“You going to turn me in?”
“I’m a military cop,” Reacher said. “You done anything to hurt the army?”
“The army?” Penney said. “No, I was a good soldier.”
“So why would I turn you in?”
Penney looked blank.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What did you do to the civilians?” Reacher asked.
“You’re going to turn me in,” Penney said, helplessly.
Reacher shrugged at the wheel.
“Well, that depends,” he said. “What did you do?”
Penney said nothing. Reacher turned his head and looked straight at him. A powerful silent stare, hypnotic intensity in his eyes, held for a hundred yards of road.
“What did you do?” he asked again.
Penney couldn’t look away. He took a breath.
“I burned my house,” he said. “Near Mojave. I worked seventeen years and got canned yesterday and I got all upset because they were going to take my car away so I burned my house. They’re calling it deliberate arson.”
“Near Mojave?” Reacher said. “They would. They don’t like fires down there.”
Penney nodded. “I should have thought harder. But I was real mad. Seventeen years, and suddenly I’m shit on their shoe. And my car got stolen anyway, first night I’m away.”
“There are roadblocks all around here,” Reacher said. “I came through one south of the city.”
“You think they’re for me?” Penney asked.
“Could be,” Reacher said. “They don’t like fires down there.”
“You going to turn me in?”
Reacher looked at him again, hard and silent.
“Is that all you did?”
Penney nodded. “Yes, sir, that’s all I did.”
There was silence for a beat. Just the sound of the wet pavement under the tires.
“Well, I don’t have a problem with it,” Reacher said. “A guy does a jungle tour, works seventeen years and gets canned, I guess he’s entitled to get a little mad.”
“So what should I do?”
“You got attachments?”
“Divorced, no kids.”
“So start over, someplace else.”
“They’ll find me,” Penney said.
“You’re already thinking about changing your name,” Reacher said.
Penney nodded.
“I junked all my ID,” he said. “Buried it in the woods.”
“So build a new identity. Get new paper. That’s all anybody cares about. Pieces of paper.”
“Like how?”
Reacher was quiet another beat, thinking hard.
“Easy enough,” he said. “Classic way is find some cemetery, find a kid who died as a child, get a copy of the birth certificate, start from there. Get a Social Security number, a passport, credit cards, and you’re a new person.”
Penney shrugged. “I can’t do all that. Too difficult. And I don’t have time. According to you, there’s a roadblock up ahead. How am I going to do all of that stuff before we get there?”
“There are other ways,” Reacher said.
“Forgeries?”
Reacher shook his head. “No good. Sooner or later, forgeries don’t work.”
“So how?”
“Find some guy who’s already created false ID for himself, and take it away from him.”
Penney shook his head. “You’re crazy. How am I going to do that?”
“Maybe you don’t need to do that. Maybe I already did it for you.”
“You got false ID?”
“Not me,” Reacher said. “Guy I was looking for.”
“What guy?”
Reacher drove one-handed and pulled a sheaf of official paper from his inside jacket pocket.
“Arrest warrant,” he said. “Army liaison officer at a weapons plant outside of Fresno, looks to be peddling blueprints. Turns out to have three separate sets of bogus ID, all perfect, all completely backed up with everything from elementary school records onward. Which makes it likely they’re Soviet, which means they can’t be beat. I’m on my way back from talking to him right now. He was running, too, already on his second set of papers. I took them. They’re clean. They’re in the trunk of this car, in a wallet, in a
jacket.”
Traffic was slowing ahead. There was red glare visible through the streaming windshield. Flashing blue lights. Yellow flashlight beams waving, side to side.
“There’s the roadblock,” Reacher said.
“So can I use this guy’s ID?” Penney asked urgently.
“Sure you can,” Reacher said. “Hop out and get it. Bring the wallet from the jacket.”
He slowed and stopped on the shoulder. Penney got out. Ducked away to the back of the car and lifted the trunk lid. Came back a long moment later, white in the face.
“Got it?” Reacher asked.
Penney nodded silently. Held up the wallet.
“It’s all in there,” Reacher said. “I checked. Everything anybody needs.”
Penney nodded again.
“So put it in your pocket,” Reacher said.
Penney slipped the wallet into his inside jacket pocket. Reacher’s right hand came up. There was a gun in it. And a pair of handcuffs in his left.
“Now sit still,” he said, quietly.
He leaned over and snapped the cuffs on Penney’s wrists, one-handed. Put the car back into drive and crawled forward.
“What’s this for?” Penney asked.
“Quiet,” Reacher said.
They were two cars away from the checkpoint. Three highway patrolmen in rain capes were directing traffic into a corral formed by parked cruisers. Their light bars were flashing bright in the shiny dark.
“What?” Penney said again.
Reacher said nothing. Just stopped where the cop told him and wound his window down. The night air blew in, cold and wet. The cop bent down. Reacher handed him his military ID. The cop played his flashlight over it and handed it back.
“Who’s your passenger?” he asked.
“My prisoner,” Reacher said. He handed over the arrest warrant.
“He got ID?” the cop asked.
Reacher leaned over and slipped the wallet out from inside Penney’s jacket, two-fingered like a pickpocket. Flipped it open and passed it through the window. A second cop stood in Reacher’s headlight beams and copied the plate number onto a clipboard. Stepped around the hood and joined the first guy.