Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

Roscoe killed the motor. We sat in the car. I stretched my arm along the back of her seat. Cupped her shoulder. I was tired. I’d been busy all day. I wanted to sit like this for a while. It was a quiet, dull night. Warm in the car. I wanted music. Something with an ache to it. But we had things to do. We had to find Judy. The woman who had bought Sherman Stoller’s watch and had it engraved. To Sherman, love Judy. We had to find Judy and tell her the man she’d loved had bled to death under a highway.

  “What do you make of this?” Roscoe said. She was bright and awake.

  “Don’t know,” I said. “They’re for sale, not rental. They look expensive. Could a truck driver afford this?”

  “Doubt it,” she said. “These probably cost as much as my place, and I couldn’t make my payments without the subsidy I get. And I make more than any truck driver, that’s for sure.”

  “OK,” I said. “So our guess is old Sherman was getting some kind of a subsidy, too, right? Otherwise he couldn’t afford to live here.”

  “Sure,” she said. “But what kind of a subsidy?”

  “The kind that gets people killed,” I said.

  STOLLER’S BUILDING WAS WAY IN BACK. PROBABLY THE first phase to have been built. The old man in the poor part of town had said his son had moved out two years ago. That could be about right. This first block could be about two years old. We threaded through walkways and around raised-up flower beds. Walked up a path to Sherman Stoller’s door. The path was stepping stones set in the wiry lawn. Forced an unnatural gait on you. I had to step short. Roscoe had to stretch her stride from one flagstone to the next. We reached the door. It was blue. No shine on it. Old-fashioned paint.

  “Are we going to tell her?” I said.

  “We can’t not tell her, can we?” Roscoe said. “She’s got to know.”

  I knocked on the door. Waited. Knocked again. I heard the floor creaking inside. Someone was coming. The door opened. A woman stood there. Maybe thirty, but she looked older. Short, nervous, tired. Blond from a bottle. She looked out at us.

  “We’re police officers, ma’am,” Roscoe said. “We’re looking for the Sherman Stoller residence.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Well, you found it, I guess,” the woman said.

  “May we come in?” Roscoe asked. Gently.

  Again there was silence. No movement. Then the blond woman turned and walked back down the hallway. Roscoe and I looked at each other. Roscoe followed the woman. I followed Roscoe. I shut the door behind us.

  The woman led us into a living room. A decent-sized space. Expensive furniture and rugs. A big TV. No stereo, no books. It all looked a bit halfhearted. Like somebody had spent twenty minutes with a catalog and ten thousand dollars. One of these, one of those, two of that. All delivered one morning and just kind of dumped in there.

  “Are you Mrs. Stoller?” Roscoe asked the woman. Still gentle.

  “More or less,” the woman said. “Not exactly Mrs., but as near as makes no difference anyhow.”

  “Is your name Judy?” I asked her.

  She nodded. Kept on nodding for a while. Thinking.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Judy said.

  I didn’t answer. This was the part I wasn’t good at. This was Roscoe’s part. She didn’t say anything, either.

  “He’s dead, right?” Judy said again, louder.

  “Yes, he is,” Roscoe said. “I’m very sorry.”

  Judy nodded to herself and looked around the hideous room. Nobody spoke. We just stood there. Judy sat down. She waved us to sit as well. We sat, in separate chairs. We were all sitting in a neat triangle.

  “We need to ask you some questions,” Roscoe said. She was sitting forward, leaning toward the blond woman. “May we do that?”

  Judy nodded. Looked pretty blank.

  “How long did you know Sherman?” Roscoe asked.

  “About four years, I guess,” Judy said. “Met him in Florida, where I lived. Came up here to be with him four years ago. Lived up here ever since.”

  “What was Sherman’s job?” Roscoe asked.

  Judy shrugged miserably.

  “He was a truck driver,” she said. “He got some kind of a big driving contract up here. Supposed to be long-term, you know? So we bought a little place. His folks moved in too. Lived with us for a while. Then we moved out here. Left his folks in the old house. He made good money for three years. Busy all the time. Then it stopped, a year ago. He hardly worked at all since. Just an odd day, now and then.”

  “You own both the houses?” Roscoe said.

  “I don’t own a damn thing,” Judy said. “Sherman owned the houses. Yes, both of them.”

  “So he was doing well for the first three years?” Roscoe asked her.

  Judy gave her a look.

  “Doing well?” she said. “Grow up, for God’s sake. He was a thief. He was ripping somebody off.”

  “You sure?” I said.

  Judy swung her gaze my way. Like an artillery piece traversing.

  “It don’t need much brains to figure it out,” she said. “In three years he paid cash for two houses, two lots of furniture, cars, God knows what. And this place wasn’t cheap, either. We got lawyers and doctors and all sorts living here. And he had enough saved so he didn’t have to work at all since last September. If he did all that on the level, then I’m the First Lady, right?”

  She was giving us a defiant stare. She’d known about it all along. She’d known what would happen when he was found out. She was challenging us to deny her the right to blame him.

  “Who was his big contract with?” Roscoe asked her.

  “Some outfit called Island Air-conditioning,” she said. “He spent three years hauling air conditioners. Taking them down to Florida. Maybe they went on to the islands, I don’t know. He used to steal them. There’s two old boxes in the garage right now. Want to see?”

  She didn’t wait for a reply. Just jumped up and stalked out. We followed. We all went down some back stairs and through a basement door. Into a garage. It was empty except for a couple of old cartons dumped against a wall. Cardboard cartons, could have been a year or two old. Marked with a manufacturer’s logo. Island Air-conditioning, Inc. This End Up. The sealing tape was torn and hanging off. Each box had a long serial number written on by hand. Each box must have held a single unit. The sort you jam in your window frame, makes a hell of a noise. Judy glared at the boxes and glared at us. It was a glare which said: I gave him a gold watch and he gave me a shitload of worry.

  I walked over and looked at the cartons. They were empty. I smelled a faint, sour odor in them. Then we went back upstairs. Judy got an album out of a cupboard. Sat and looked at a photograph of Sherman.

  “What happened to him?” she asked.

  It was a simple question. Deserved a simple answer.

  “He was shot in the head,” I lied. “Died instantly.”

  Judy nodded. Like she wasn’t surprised.

  “When?” she asked.

  “On Thursday night,” Roscoe told her. “At midnight. Did he say where he was going on Thursday night?”

  Judy shook her head.

  “He never told me much,” she said.

  “Did he ever mention meeting an investigator?” Roscoe asked.

  Judy shook her head again.

  “What about Pluribus?” I asked her. “Did he ever use that word?”

  She looked blank.

  “Is that a disease?” she said. “Lungs or something?”

  “What about Sunday?” I said. “This Sunday coming? Did he ever say anything about that?”

  “No,” Judy said. “He never said much about anything.”

  She sat and stared at the photographs in the album. The room was quiet.

  “Did he know any lawyers in Florida?” Roscoe asked her.

  “Lawyers?” Judy said. “In Florida? Why should he?”

  “He was arrested in Jacksonville,” Roscoe said. “Two years ago. It was a traffic violation in his tr
uck. A lawyer came to help him out.”

  Judy shrugged, like two years ago was ancient history to her.

  “There are lawyers sniffing everywhere, right?” she said. “No big deal.”

  “This guy wasn’t an ambulance-chaser,” Roscoe said. “He was a partner in a big firm down there. Any idea how Sherman could have gotten hold of him?”

  Judy shrugged again.

  “Maybe his employer did it,” she said. “Island Air-conditioning. They gave us good medical insurance. Sherman let me go to the doctor, any old time I needed to.”

  We all went quiet. Nothing more to say. Judy sat and gazed at the photographs in the album.

  “Want to see his picture?” she said.

  I walked around behind her chair and bent to look at the photograph. It showed a sandy, rat-faced man. Small, slight, with a grin. He was standing in front of a yellow panel van. Grinning and squinting at the camera. The grin gave it poignancy.

  “That’s the truck he drove,” Judy said.

  But I wasn’t looking at the truck or Sherman Stoller’s poignant grin. I was looking at a figure in the background of the picture. It was out of focus and turned half away from the camera, but I could make out who it was. It was Paul Hubble.

  I waved Roscoe over and she bent beside me and looked at the photograph. I saw a wave of surprise pass over her face as she recognized Hubble. Then she bent closer. Looked harder. I saw a second wave of surprise. She had recognized something else.

  “When was this picture taken?” she asked.

  Judy shrugged.

  “Summer last year, I guess,” she said.

  Roscoe touched the blurred image of Hubble with her fingernail.

  “Did Sherman say who this guy was?”

  “The new boss,” Judy said. “He was there six months, then he fired Sherman’s ass.”

  “Island Air-conditioning’s new boss?” Roscoe said. “Was there a reason he laid Sherman off?”

  “Sherman said they didn’t need him no more,” Judy said. “He never said much.”

  “Is this where Island Air-conditioning is based?” Roscoe asked. “Where this picture was taken?”

  Judy shrugged and nodded her head, tentatively.

  “I guess so,” she said. “Sherman never told me much about it.”

  “We need to keep this photograph,” Roscoe told her. “We’ll let you have it back later.”

  Judy fished it out of the plastic. Handed it to her.

  “Keep it,” she said. “I don’t want it.”

  Roscoe took the picture and put it in her inside jacket pocket. She and I moved back to the middle of the room and stood there.

  “Shot in the head,” Judy said. “That’s what happens when you mess around. I told him they’d catch up with him, sooner or later.”

  Roscoe nodded sympathetically.

  “We’ll keep in touch,” she said to her. “You know, the funeral arrangements, and we might want a statement.”

  Judy glared at us again.

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m not going to his funeral. I wasn’t his wife, so I’m not his widow. I’m going to forget I ever knew him. That man was trouble from beginning to end.”

  She stood there glaring at us. We shuffled out, down the hall, out through the door. Across the awkward path. We held hands as we walked back to the car.

  “What?” I asked her. “What’s in the photograph?”

  She was walking fast.

  “Wait,” she said. “I’ll show you in the car.”

  19

  WE GOT IN THE CHEVY AND SHE SNAPPED ON THE DOME light. Pulled the photograph out of her pocket. Leaned over and tilted the picture so the light caught the shiny surface. Checked it carefully. Handed it to me.

  “Look at the edge,” she said. “On the left.”

  The picture was of Sherman Stoller standing in front of a yellow truck. Paul Hubble was turned away, in the background. The two figures and the truck filled the whole frame apart from a wedge of blacktop at the bottom. And a thin margin of background to the left. The background slice was even more out of focus than Hubble was, but I could see the edge of a modern metal building, with silver siding. A tall tree beyond. The frame of a door. It was a big industrial door, rolled up. The frame was a dark red color. Some kind of baked-on industrial coating. Partly decorative, partly preservative. Some kind of a shed door. There was gloom inside the shed.

  “That’s Kliner’s warehouse,” she said. “At the top of the county road.”

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “I recognize the tree,” she said.

  I looked again. It was a very distinctive tree. Dead on one side. Maybe split by lightning.

  “That’s Kliner’s warehouse,” she said again. “No doubt about that.”

  Then she clicked her car phone on and took the photograph back. Dialed DMV in Atlanta and called in the number from the front of Stoller’s truck. Waited a long moment, tapping her index finger on the steering wheel. I heard the crackle of the response in the earpiece. Then she clicked the phone off and turned to me.

  “The truck is registered to Kliner Industries,” she said. “And the registered address is Zacarias Perez, Attorneys-at-Law, Jacksonville, Florida.”

  I nodded. She nodded back. Sherman Stoller’s buddies. The ones who had got him out of Jacksonville Central in fifty-five minutes flat, two years ago.

  “OK,” she said. “Put it all together. Hubble, Stoller, Joe’s investigation. They’re printing counterfeit money down in Kliner’s warehouse, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Wrong,” I said. “There’s no printing going on inside the States. It all happens abroad. Molly Beth Gordon told me that, and she ought to know what she’s talking about. She said Joe had made it impossible. And whatever Stoller was doing, Judy said he stopped doing it a year ago. And Finlay said Joe only started this whole thing a year ago. Around the same time Hubble fired Stoller.”

  Roscoe nodded. Shrugged.

  “We need Molly’s help,” she said. “We need a copy of Joe’s file.”

  “Or Picard’s help,” I said. “We might find Joe’s hotel room and get hold of the original. It’s a race to see who’s going to call us first, Molly or Picard.”

  Roscoe clicked off the dome light. Started the car for the ride back to the airport hotel. I just sprawled out beside her, yawning. I could sense she was getting uptight. She had run out of things to do. Run out of distractions. Now she had to face the quiet vulnerable hours of the night. The first night after last night. The prospect was making her agitated.

  “You got that gun, Reacher?” she asked.

  I squirmed around in the seat to face her.

  “It’s in the trunk,” I said. “In that box. You put it in there, remember?”

  “Bring it inside, OK?” she said. “Makes me feel better.”

  I grinned sleepily in the dark. Yawned.

  “Makes me feel better too,” I said. “It’s a hell of a gun.”

  Then we lapsed back into silence. Roscoe found the hotel lot. We got out of the car and stood stretching in the dark. I opened the trunk. Lifted the box out and slammed the lid. Went in through our lobby and up in the elevator.

  In the room we just crashed out. Roscoe laid her shiny .38 on the carpet on her side of the bed. I reloaded my giant .44 and laid it on my side. Cocked and locked. We wedged a chair under the door handle. Roscoe felt safer that way.

  I WOKE EARLY AND LAY IN BED, THINKING ABOUT JOE. Wednesday morning. He’d been dead five days. Roscoe was already up. She was standing in the middle of the floor, stretching. Some kind of a yoga thing. She’d taken a shower and she was only half dressed. She had no trousers on. Just a shirt. She had her back to me. As she stretched, the shirt was riding way up. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about Joe anymore.

  “Roscoe?” I said.

  “What?” she said.

  “You’ve got the most wonderful ass on the planet,” I said.

  She giggled.
I jumped on her. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t do anything else. She drove me crazy. It was the giggle that did it to me. It made me crazy. I hauled her back into the big hotel bed. The building could have fallen down and we wouldn’t have noticed it. We finished in an exhausted tangle. Lay there for a while. Then Roscoe got up again and showered for the second time that morning. Got dressed again. Trousers and everything. Grinned at me as if to say she was sparing me from any further temptation.

  “So did you mean it?” she said.

  “Mean what?” I said, with a smile.

  “You know what.” She smiled back. “When you told me I had a cute ass.”

  “I didn’t say you had a cute ass,” I said. “I’ve seen plenty of cute asses. I said yours was the most wonderful ass on the whole damn planet.”

  “But did you mean it?” she said.

  “You bet I meant it,” I said. “Don’t underestimate the attraction of your ass, Roscoe, whatever you do.”

  I called room service for breakfast. Removed the chair from under the door handle ready for the little cart. Pulled the heavy drapes. It was a glorious morning. A bright blue sky, no clouds at all, brilliant fall sunshine. The room was flooded with light. We cracked the window and let in the air and the smells and the sounds of the day. The view was spectacular. Right over the airport and to the city beyond. The cars in the lots caught the sun and looked like jewels on beige velvet. The planes clawed their way into the air and wheeled slowly away like fat, important birds. The buildings downtown grew tall and straight in the sun. A glorious morning. But it was the sixth straight morning my brother wasn’t alive to see.

  ROSCOE USED THE PHONE TO CALL FINLAY DOWN IN MARGRAVE. She told him about the photograph of Hubble and Stoller standing in the sun on the warehouse forecourt. Then she gave him our room number and told him to call us if Molly got back to us from Washington. Or if Picard got back to us with information from the car rental people about the burned Pontiac. I figured we should stay in Atlanta in case Picard beat Molly and we got a hotel trace on Joe. Chances were he stayed in the city, maybe near the airport. No point in us driving all the way back down to Margrave and then having to drive all the way back up to Atlanta again. So we waited. I fiddled with the radio built into the nightstand thing. Came up with a station playing something halfway decent. Sounded like they were playing through an early Canned Heat album. Bouncy and sunny and just right for a bright empty morning.