Breakfast came and we ate it. The whole bit. Pancakes, syrup, bacon. Lots of coffee in a thick china jug. Afterward, I lay back on the bed. Pretty soon started feeling restless. Started feeling like it had been a mistake to wait around. It felt like we weren’t doing anything. I could see Roscoe was feeling the same way. She propped the photograph of Hubble and Stoller and the yellow van on the nightstand and glared at it. I glared at the telephone. It wasn’t ringing. We wandered around the room, waiting. Then I stooped to pick up the Desert Eagle off the floor by the bed. Hefted it in my hand. Traced the engraved name on the grip with my finger. Looked across at Roscoe. I was curious about the guy who’d bought that massive automatic.
“What was Gray like?” I asked.
“Gray?” she said. “He was so thorough. You want to get Joe’s files? You should see Gray’s paperwork. There are twenty-five years of his files in the station house. All meticulous, all comprehensive. Gray was a good detective.”
“Why did he hang himself?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I never understood it.”
“Was he depressed?” I said.
“Not really,” she said. “I mean, he was always sort of depressed. Lugubrious, you know? A very dour sort of guy. And bored. He was a good detective, and he was wasted in Margrave. But no worse in February than any other time. It was a total surprise to me. I was very upset.”
“Were you close?” I asked her.
She shrugged.
“Yes, we were,” she said. “In a way, we were pretty close. He was a dour guy, you know, not really that close to anybody. Never married, always lived alone, no relatives. He was a teetotaler, so he would never come out for a beer or anything. He was quiet, messy, a little overweight. No hair and a big straggly beard. A very self-contained, comfortable type of a guy. A loner, really. But he was as close to me as he was ever going to get to anybody. We liked each other, in a quiet sort of a way.”
“And he never said anything?” I asked her. “Just hanged himself one day?”
“That’s how it was,” she said. “A total shock. I’ll never understand it.”
“Why did you have his gun in your desk?” I said.
“He asked if he could keep it in there,” she said. “He had no space in his own desk. He generated a lot of paper-work. He just asked if I could keep a box for him with the gun hidden in it. It was his private weapon. He said he couldn’t get it approved by the department because the caliber was too big. He made it feel like some kind of a big secret.”
I put the dead man’s secret gun down on the carpet again and the silence was shattered by the phone ringing. I sprinted for the nightstand and answered it. Heard Finlay’s voice. I gripped the phone and held my breath.
“Reacher?” Finlay said. “Picard got what we need. He traced the car.”
I breathed out and nodded to Roscoe.
“Great, Finlay,” I said. “So what’s the story?”
“Go to his office,” he said. “He’ll give you the spread, face to face. I didn’t want too much conversation on the phones down here.”
I closed my eyes for a second and felt a surge of energy.
“Thanks, Finlay,” I said. “Speak to you later.”
“OK,” he said. “Take care, right?”
Then he hung up and left me sitting there holding the phone, smiling.
“I thought he’d never call,” Roscoe laughed. “But I guess eighteen hours isn’t too bad, even for the Bureau, right?”
THE ATLANTA FBI WAS HOUSED IN A NEW FEDERAL BUILDING downtown. Roscoe parked at the curb outside. The Bureau reception called upstairs and told us Special Agent Picard would come right down to meet with us. We waited for him in the lobby. It was a big hall, with a brave stab at decoration, but it still had the glum atmosphere government buildings have. Picard came out of an elevator within three minutes. He loped over. He seemed to fill the whole hall. He nodded to me and took Roscoe’s hand.
“Heard a lot about you from Finlay,” he said to her.
His bear’s voice rumbled. Roscoe nodded and smiled.
“The car Finlay found?” he said. “Rental Pontiac. Booked out to Joe Reacher, Atlanta airport, Thursday night at eight.”
“Great, Picard,” I said. “Any guess about where he was holed up?”
“Better than a guess, my friend,” Picard said. “They had the exact location. It was a prebooked car. They delivered it right to his hotel.”
He mentioned a place a mile the other way from the hotel we were using.
“Thanks, Picard,” I said. “I owe you.”
“No problem, my friend,” he said. “You take care now, OK?”
He loped off back to the elevator and we raced back south to the airport. Roscoe swung onto the perimeter road and accelerated into the flow. Across the divider, a black pickup flashed by. Brand-new. I spun around and caught a glimpse of it disappearing behind a raft of trucks. Black. Brand-new. Probably nothing. They sell more pickups down here than anything else.
ROSCOE PULLED HER BADGE AT THE DESK WHERE PICARD said Joe had checked in on Thursday. The clerk did some keyboard work and told us he had been in 621, sixth floor, far end of the corridor. She said a manager would meet us up there. So we went up in the elevator and walked the length of a dark corridor. Stood waiting outside the door to Joe’s room.
The manager came by more or less straight away and opened the room up with his passkey. We stepped in. The room was empty. It had been cleaned and tidied. It looked like it was ready for new occupants.
“What about his stuff?” I said. “Where is it all?”
“We cleared it out Saturday,” the manager said. “The guy was booked in Thursday night, supposed to vacate by eleven Friday morning. What we do is we give them an extra day, then if they don’t show, we clear them out, down to housekeeping.”
“So his stuff is in a closet somewhere?” I asked.
“Downstairs,” the manager said. “You should see the stuff we got down there. People leave things all the time.”
“So can we go take a look?” I said.
“Basement,” he said. “Use the stairs from the lobby. You’ll find it.”
The manager strolled off. Roscoe and I walked the length of the corridor again and rode back down in the elevator. We found the service staircase and went down to the basement. Housekeeping was a giant hall stacked with linens and towels. There were hampers and baskets full of soap and those free sachets you find in the showers. Maids were pulling in and out with the trolleys they use for servicing the rooms. There was a glassed-in office cubicle in the near corner with a woman at a small desk. We walked over and rapped on the glass. She looked up. Roscoe held out her badge.
“Help you?” the woman said.
“Room six-two-one,” Roscoe said. “You cleared out some belongings, Saturday morning. You got them down here?”
I was holding my breath again.
“Six-two-one?” the woman said. “He came by for them already. They’re gone.”
I breathed out. We were too late. I went numb with disappointment.
“Who came by?” I asked. “When?”
“The guest,” the woman said. “This morning, maybe nine, nine thirty.”
“Who was he?” I asked her.
She pulled a small book off a shelf and thumbed it open. Licked a stubby finger and pointed to a line.
“Joe Reacher,” she said. “He signed the book and took the stuff.”
She reversed the book and slid it toward us. There was a scrawled signature on the line.
“What did this Reacher guy look like?” I asked her.
She shrugged.
“Foreign,” she said. “Some kind of a Latino. Maybe from Cuba? Little dark guy, slender, nice smile. Very polite sort of a guy, as I recall.”
“You got a list of the stuff?” I said.
She slid the stubby finger further along the line. There was a small column filled with tight handwriting. It listed a garment bag,
eight articles of clothing, a toilet bag, four shoes. The last item listed was: one briefcase.
We just walked away from her and found the stairs back to the lobby. Walked out into the morning sun. It didn’t feel like such a great day anymore.
We reached the car. Leaned side by side on the front fender. I was weighing up in my mind whether Joe would have been smart enough and careful enough to do what I would have done. I figured maybe he would have been. He’d spent a long time around smart and careful people.
“Roscoe?” I said. “If you were the guy walking out of here with Joe’s stuff, what would you do?”
She stopped with the car door half open. Thought about it. “I’d keep the briefcase,” she said. “Take it wherever I was supposed to take it. The rest of the stuff, I’d get rid of it.”
“That’s what I would do as well,” I said. “Where would you get rid of it?”
“First place I saw, I guess,” she said.
There was a service road running between the hotel and the next one in line. It looped behind the hotels and then out onto the perimeter road. There was a line of Dumpsters along a twenty-yard stretch of it. I pointed.
“Suppose he drove out that way?” I said. “Suppose he stopped and lobbed the garment bag straight into one of those Dumpsters?”
“But he’d have kept the briefcase, right?” Roscoe said.
“Maybe we aren’t looking for the briefcase,” I said. “Yesterday, I drove miles and miles out to that stand of trees, but I hid in the field. A diversion, right? It’s a habit. Maybe Joe had the same habit. Maybe he carried a briefcase but kept his important stuff in the garment bag.”
Roscoe shrugged. Wasn’t convinced. We started walking down the service road. Up close, the Dumpsters were huge. I had to lever myself up on the edge of each one and peer in. The first one was empty. Nothing in it at all, except the baked-on kitchen dirt from years of use. The second one was full. I found a length of studding from some demolished drywall and poked around with it. Couldn’t see anything. I heaved myself down and walked to the next one.
There was a garment bag in it. Lying right on top of some old cartons. I fished for it with the length of wood. Hauled it out. Tossed it onto the ground at Roscoe’s feet. Jumped down next to it. It was a battered, well-traveled bag. Scuffed and scratched. Lots of airline tags all over it. There was a little nameplate in the shape of a miniature gold credit card fastened to the handle. It said: Reacher.
“OK, Joe,” I said to myself. “Let’s see if you were a smart guy.”
I was looking for the shoes. They were in the outside pocket of the bag. Two pairs. Four shoes, just like it said on the housekeeper’s list. I pulled the inner soles out of each one in turn. Under the third one, I found a tiny Ziploc bag. With a sheet of computer paper folded up inside it.
“Smart as a whip, Joe,” I said to myself, and laughed.
20
ROSCOE AND I DANCED AROUND THE SERVICE ALLEY TOGETHER like players in the dugout watching the winning run soar out of sight. Then we hustled over to the Chevy and raced the mile back to our hotel. Ran into the lobby, into the elevator. Unlocked our room and fell in. The telephone was ringing. It was Finlay, on the line from Margrave again. He sounded as excited as we were.
“Molly Beth Gordon just called,” he said. “She did it. She’s got the files we need. She’s flying down here, right now. She told me it was amazing stuff. Sounded high as a kite. Atlanta arrivals, two o’clock. I’ll meet you there. Delta, from Washington. Picard give you anything?”
“Sure did,” I said. “He’s quite a guy. I got the rest of the printout, I think.”
“You think?” Finlay said. “You don’t know?”
“Only just got back,” I said. “Haven’t looked at it yet.”
“So look at it, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “It’s important, right?”
“See you later, Harvard guy,” I said.
We sat down at the table over by the window. Unzipped the little plastic bag and pulled out the paper. Unfolded it carefully. It was a sheet of computer paper. The top inch had been torn off the right-hand corner. Half the heading had been left behind. It said: Operation E Unum.
“Operation E Unum Pluribus,” Roscoe said.
Underneath was a triple-spaced list of initials with telephone numbers opposite. The first set of initials was P.H. The phone number was torn off.
“Paul Hubble,” Roscoe said. “His number and the other half of the heading was what Finlay found.”
I nodded. Then there were four more sets of initials. The first two were W.B. and K.K. They had phone numbers alongside. I recognized a New York area code against K.K. The W.B. area code I figured I’d have to look up. The third set of initials was J.S. The code was 504. New Orleans area. I’d been there less than a month ago. The fourth set of initials was M.B.G. There was a phone number with a 202 area code. I pointed to it, so Roscoe could see it.
“Molly Beth Gordon,” she said. “Washington, D.C.”
I nodded again. It wasn’t the number I had called from the rosewood office. Maybe her home number. The final two items on the torn paper were not initials, and there were no corresponding phone numbers. The second-to-last item was just two words: Stollers’ Garage. The last item was three words: Gray’s Kliner File. I looked at the careful capital letters and I could just about feel my dead brother’s neat, pedantic personality bursting off the page.
Paul Hubble we knew about. He was dead. Molly Beth Gordon we knew about. She’d be here at two o’clock. We’d seen the garage up at Sherman Stoller’s place on the golf course. It held nothing but two empty cartons. That left the underlined heading, three sets of initials with three phone numbers, and the three words: Gray’s Kliner File. I checked the time. Just past noon. Too early to sit back and wait for Molly Beth to arrive. I figured we should make a start.
“First we think about the heading,” I said. “E Unum Pluribus.”
Roscoe shrugged.
“That’s the U.S. motto, right?” she said. “The Latin thing?”
“No,” I said. “It’s the motto backwards. This more or less means out of one comes many. Not out of many comes one.”
“Could Joe have written it down wrong?” she said.
I shook my head.
“I doubt it,” I said. “I don’t think Joe would make that kind of a mistake. It must mean something.”
Roscoe shrugged again.
“Doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said. “What else?”
“Gray’s Kliner File,” I said. “Did Gray have a file on Kliner?”
“Probably,” Roscoe said. “He had a file on just about everything. Somebody spat on the sidewalk, he’d put it in a file.”
I nodded. Stepped back to the bed and picked up the phone. Called Finlay down in Margrave. Baker told me he’d already left. So I dialed the other numbers on Joe’s printout. The W.B. number was in New Jersey. Princeton University. Faculty of modern history. I hung up straight away. Couldn’t see the connection. The K.K. number was in New York City. Columbia University. Faculty of modern history. I hung up again. Then I dialed J.S. in New Orleans. I heard one ring tone and a busy voice.
“Fifteenth squad, detectives,” the voice said.
“Detectives?” I said. “Is that the NOPD?”
“Fifteenth squad,” the voice said again. “Can I help you?”
“You got somebody there with the initials J.S.?” I asked.
“J.S.?” the voice said. “I got three of them. Which one do you want?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “Does the name Joe Reacher mean anything to you?”
“What the hell is this?” the voice said. “Twenty Questions or something?”
“Ask them, will you?” I said. “Ask each J.S. if they know Joe Reacher. Will you do that? I’ll call back later, OK?”
Down in New Orleans, the fifteenth squad desk guy grunted and hung up. I shrugged at Roscoe and put the phone back on the nightstand.
“We wait
for Molly?” she said.
I nodded. I was a little nervous about meeting Molly. It was going to be like meeting a ghost connected to another ghost.
WE WAITED AT THE CRAMPED TABLE IN THE WINDOW. Watched the sun fall away from its noontime peak. Wasted time passing Joe’s torn printout back and forth between us. I stared at the heading. E Unum Pluribus. Out of one comes many. That was Joe Reacher, in three words. Something important, all bound up in a wry little pun.
“Let’s go,” Roscoe said.
We were early, but we were anxious. We gathered up our things. Rode the elevator to the lobby and let the dead guys settle up for our phone calls. Then we walked over to Roscoe’s Chevy. Started threading our way around to arrivals. It wasn’t easy. The airport hotels were planned for people heading out of arrivals or heading into departures. Nobody had thought of people going our way.
“We don’t know what Molly looks like,” Roscoe said.
“But she knows what I look like,” I said. “I look like Joe.”
The airport was vast. We saw most of it as we crabbed over to the right quarter. It was bigger than some cities I’d been in. We drove for miles. Found the right terminal. Missed a lane change and passed the short-term parking. Came around again and lined up at the barrier. Roscoe snatched the ticket and eased into the lot.
“Go left,” I said.
The lot was packed. I was craning over, looking for spaces. Then I saw a vague black shape slide by in the line on my right. I caught it out of the corner of my eye.
“Go right, go right,” I said.
I thought it was the rear end of a black pickup. Brand-new. Sliding by on my right. Roscoe hauled the wheel over and we swung into the next aisle. Caught a flash of red brake lights in black sheetmetal. A pickup swung out of sight. Roscoe howled down the aisle and cornered hard.
The next aisle was empty. Nothing moving. Just ranks of automobiles standing quiet in the sun. Same thing in the next aisle. Nothing on the move. No black pickup. We drove all over the lot. Took us a long time. We were held up by the cars moving in and out. But we covered the whole area. Couldn’t find a black pickup anywhere.
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