Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  Silence in the room. It lasted minutes.

  “So here I am,” Reacher said.

  “This must be classified information,” Helen Rodin said. “I mean, surely it can’t ever be used. There would be a huge scandal.”

  Reacher nodded. “It’s highly classified. It’s sealed inside the Pentagon. That’s why I asked if this conversation was privileged.”

  “You’d get in big trouble if you talked about it.”

  “I’ve been in big trouble before. I came here to find out if I needed to get in big trouble again. As it happens, I don’t think I do. I think your father can put James Barr away without my help. But my help is always available if he needs it.”

  Then Helen understood.

  “You’re here to pressure me,” she said. “Aren’t you? You’re telling me if I try too hard, you’ll cut me off at the knees.”

  “I’m here to keep my promise,” Reacher said. “To James Barr.”

  He closed the door and left them there, three silent and disappointed people in a room. Then he rode down in the elevator. Ann Yanni got in again on two. He wondered for a moment if she spent all day riding the elevators, hoping to be recognized. Hoping to be asked for an autograph. He ignored her. Got out with her in the lobby and just headed for the door.

  He stood for a moment in the plaza. Deciding. James Barr’s medical condition was the complicating factor. He didn’t want to stick around until the guy woke up. If that happened at all, it might take weeks. And Reacher was not a guy who liked to stick around. He liked to be on the move. Two days in one place was about his limit. But he was stuck for alternatives. He couldn’t hint at anything to Alex Rodin. Couldn’t give him a call-me-if-you-need-me number. For one thing, he didn’t have a phone. For another, a guy as squared away and cautious as Alex Rodin was would worry away at the hint until something began to unravel. He would make the link to the Pentagon easily enough. Reacher had even asked did she get my name from the Pentagon? That had been a careless mistake. So Alex Rodin would put two and two together, eventually. He would figure, There’s something extra here, and I can find out what it is from the Pentagon. The Pentagon would stonewall him, of course. But Rodin wouldn’t like being stonewalled. He would go to the media. Ann Yanni, probably. She would be ready for another network story. And at bottom Rodin would be insecure enough about losing the case that he would simply have to know. He wouldn’t give up on it.

  And Reacher didn’t want the story out there. Not unless it was absolutely necessary. Gulf War vets had it hard enough, with the chemical stuff and the uranium poisoning. All they had going for them was the conflict’s spotless just-war reputation. They didn’t need defaming by association with people like Barr and his victims. People would say, Hey, they were all doing it. And they weren’t all doing it, in Reacher’s experience. That had been a good army. So he didn’t want the story out there unless it was absolutely necessary, and he wanted to judge that for himself.

  So, no hints to Alex Rodin. No call-me contingencies.

  So . . . what, exactly?

  He decided to stick around for twenty-four hours. Maybe there would be a clearer prognosis on Barr’s condition after that. Maybe somehow he could check with Emerson and get a better feel for the evidence. Then maybe he could feel OK about leaving things with Alex Rodin’s office, on a kind of forensic autopilot. If there were problems down the road maybe he would read about them in a newspaper somewhere, far in the future, on a beach or in a bar, and then he could come all the way back again.

  So, twenty-four hours in a small heartland city.

  He decided to go see if there was a river.

  There was a river. It was a broad, slow body of water that moved west to east through an area south of downtown. Some tributary that fed the mighty Ohio, he guessed. Its north bank was straightened and strengthened with massive stone blocks along a three-hundred-yard stretch. The blocks might have weighed fifty tons each. They were immaculately chiseled and expertly fitted. They made a quayside. A wharf. They had tall fat iron mushrooms set into them, to tie off ropes. Stone paving slabs made the wharf thirty feet deep. All along its length were tall wooden sheds, open on the river side, open on the street side. The street was made of cobbles. A hundred years ago there would have been huge river barges tied up and unloading. There would have been swarms of men at work. There would have been horses and carts clattering on the cobbles. But now there was nothing. Just absolute stillness, and the slow drift of the water. Scabs of rust on the iron mushrooms, clumps of weeds between the stones.

  Some of the sheds still had faded names on them. McGinty Dry Goods. Allentown Seed Company. Parker Supply. Reacher strolled the three hundred yards and looked at all of them. They were still standing, strong and square. Ripe for renovation, he guessed. A city that put an ornamental pool with a fountain in a public plaza would spruce up the waterfront. It was inevitable. There was construction all over town. It would move south. They would give someone tax breaks to open a riverside café. Maybe a bar. Maybe with live music, Thursday through Saturday. Maybe with a little museum laying out the history of the river trade.

  He turned to walk back and came face-to-face with Helen Rodin.

  “You’re not such a hard man to find,” she said.

  “Evidently,” he said.

  “Tourists always come to the docks.”

  She was carrying a lawyer-size briefcase.

  “Can I buy you lunch?” she said.

  She walked him back north to the edge of the new gentrification. In the space of a single dug-up block the city changed from old and worn to new and repainted. Stores changed from dusty mom-and-pop places with displays of vacuum cleaner bags and washing machine hoses to new establishments showing off spotlit hundred-dollar dresses. And shoes, and four-dollar lattes, and things made of titanium. They walked past a few such places and then Helen Rodin led him into an eatery. It was the kind of place he had seen before. It was the kind of place he usually avoided. White walls, some exposed brick, engine-turned aluminum tables and chairs, weird salad combinations. Random ingredients thrown together and called inventive.

  She led him to a table in the far back corner. An energetic kid came by with menus. Helen Rodin ordered something with oranges and walnuts and Gorgonzola cheese. With a cup of herbal tea. Reacher gave up on reading his menu and ordered the same thing, but with coffee, regular, black.

  “This is my favorite place in town,” Helen said.

  He nodded. He believed her. She looked right at home. The long straight hair, the black clothes. The youthful glow. He was older and came from a different time and a different place.

  “I need you to explain something,” she said.

  She bent down and opened her briefcase. Came out with the old tape player. Placed it carefully on the table. Pressed Play. Reacher heard James Barr’s first lawyer say: Denying it is not an option. Then he heard Barr say: Get Jack Reacher for me.

  “You already played that for me,” he said.

  “But why would he say it?” Helen asked.

  “That’s what you want me to explain?”

  She nodded.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Logically you’re the last person he should have asked for.”

  “I agree.”

  “Could he have been in any doubt about how you felt? Fourteen years ago?”

  “I don’t think so. I made myself pretty clear.”

  “Then why would he ask for you now?”

  Reacher didn’t answer. The food came, and they started eating. Oranges, walnuts, Gorgonzola cheese, all kinds of leaves and lettuces, and a raspberry vinaigrette. It wasn’t too bad. And the coffee was OK.

  “Play me the whole tape,” he said.

  She put her fork down and pressed the Rewind key. Kept her hand there, one fingertip on each key, like a pianist. She had long fingers. No rings. Polished nails, neatly trimmed. She pressed Play and picked up her fork again. Reacher heard no sound for a moment until the blank lea
der cleared the tape head. Then he heard a prison acoustic. Echoes, distant metallic clattering. A man breathing. Then he heard a door open and the thump of another man sitting down. No scraping of chair legs on concrete. A prison chair, bolted to the floor. The lawyer started talking. He was old and bored. He didn’t want to be there. He knew Barr was guilty. He made banal small talk for a while. Grew frustrated with Barr’s silence. Then he said, full of exasperation: I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself. There was a long, long pause, and then Barr’s voice came through, agitated, close to the microphone: They got the wrong guy. He said it again. Then the lawyer started up again, not believing him, saying the evidence was all there, looking for a reason behind an indisputable fact. Then Barr asked for Reacher, twice, and the lawyer asked if Reacher was a doctor, twice. Then Barr got up and walked away. There was the sound of hammering on a locked door, and then nothing more.

  Helen Rodin pressed the Stop key.

  “So why?” she asked. “Why say he didn’t do it and then call for a guy who knows for sure he did it before?”

  Reacher just shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. But he saw in Helen’s eyes that she had an answer.

  “You know something,” she said. “Maybe you don’t know you know it. But there’s got to be something there. Something he thinks can help him.”

  “Does it matter? He’s in a coma. He might never wake up.”

  “It matters a lot. He could get better treatment.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Are you sure? Was there a psychiatric evaluation made back then?”

  “It never got that far.”

  “Did he claim insanity?”

  “No, he claimed a perfect score. Four for four.”

  “Did you think he was nuts?”

  “That’s a big word. Was it nuts to shoot four people for fun? Of course it was. Was he nuts, legally? I’m sure he wasn’t.”

  “You must know something, Reacher,” Helen said. “It must be way down in there. You’ve got to dredge it up.”

  He kept quiet for a moment.

  “Have you actually seen the evidence?” he asked.

  “I’ve seen a summary.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “It’s terrible. There’s no question he did it. This is about mitigation, nothing more. And his state of mind. I can’t let them execute an insane person.”

  “So wait until he wakes up. Run some tests.”

  “They won’t count. He could wake up like a fruitcake and the prosecution will say that was caused by the blows to the head in the jailhouse fight. They’ll say he was perfectly sane at the time of the crime.”

  “Is your dad a fair man?”

  “He lives to win.”

  “Like father, like daughter?”

  She paused.

  “Somewhat,” she said.

  Reacher finished up his salad. Chased the last walnut around with his fork and then gave up and used his fingers instead.

  “What’s on your mind?” Helen asked.

  “Just a minor detail,” he said. “Fourteen years ago it was a very tough case with barely adequate forensics. And he confessed. This time the forensics seem to be a total slam dunk. But he’s denying it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So think about what you do know,” Helen said. “Please. You must know something. You have to ask yourself, why did he come up with your name? There has to be a reason.”

  Reacher said nothing. The kid who had served them came back and took their plates away. Reacher pointed at his coffee cup and the kid made another trip and refilled it. Reacher cradled it in his hands and smelled the steam.

  “May I ask you a personal question?” Helen Rodin said to him.

  “Depends how personal,” Reacher said.

  “Why were you so untraceable? Normally guys like Franklin can find anybody.”

  “Maybe he’s not as good as you think.”

  “He’s probably better than I think.”

  “Not everyone is traceable.”

  “I agree. But you don’t look like you belong in that category.”

  “I was in the machine,” Reacher said. “My whole life. Then the machine coughed and spat me out. So I thought, OK, if I’m out, I’m out. All the way out. I was a little angry and it was probably an immature reaction. But I got used to it.”

  “Like a game?”

  “Like an addiction,” Reacher said. “I’m addicted to being out.”

  The kid brought the check. Helen Rodin paid. Then she put her tape player back in her briefcase and she and Reacher left together. They walked north, past the construction at the bottom of First Street. She was heading to her office and he was going to look for a hotel.

  A man called Grigor Linsky watched them walk. He was slumped low in a car parked at the curb. He knew where to wait. He knew where she ate when she had company.

  CHAPTER 4

  Reacher checked into a downtown hotel called the Metropole Palace, two blocks east of First Street, about level with the main shopping strip. He paid cash up front for one night only and used the name Jimmy Reese. He had cycled through all the presidents and vice presidents long ago and was now using second basemen from the Yankees’ nonchampionship years. Jimmy Reese had played pretty well during part of 1930 and pretty badly during part of 1931. He had come from nowhere and moved on to St. Louis for part of 1932. Then he had quit. He had died in California, age ninety-two. But now he was back, with a single room and a bath in the Metropole Palace, for one night only, due to check out the next morning before eleven o’clock.

  The Metropole was a sad, half-empty, faded old place. But it had once been grand. Reacher could see that. He could picture the corn traders a hundred years ago walking up the hill from the river wharf and staying the night. He guessed the lobby had once looked like a Western saloon, but now it was thinly made over with modernist touches. There was a refurbished elevator. The rooms had swipe cards instead of keys. But he guessed the building hadn’t really changed very much. His room was certainly old-fashioned and gloomy. The mattress felt like a part of the original inventory.

  He lay down on it and put his hands behind his head. Thought back more than fourteen years to Kuwait City. All cities have colors, and KC was white. White stucco, white-painted concrete, white marble. Skies burned white by the sun. Men in white robes. The parking garage James Barr had used was white, and the apartment building opposite was white. Because of the glare the four dead guys had all been wearing aviator shades. All four men had been hit in the head, but none of the shades had broken. They had just fallen off. All four bullets had been recovered, and they broke the case. They were match-grade 168-grain jacketed boat tails. Not hollow points, because of the Geneva Convention. They were an American sniper’s bullets, either Army or Marines. If Barr had used a battle rifle or a submachine gun or a sidearm, Reacher would have gotten nowhere. Because every firearm in theater except the sniper rifles used standard NATO rounds, which would have cast the net way too wide, because just about all of NATO was in-country. But Barr’s whole purpose had been to use his own specialist weapon, just for once, this time for real. And in so doing, his four thirteen-cent bullets had nailed him.

  But it had been a tough, tough case. Maybe Reacher’s finest ever. He had used logic, deduction, paperwork, footwork, intuition, and ultimately elimination. At the end of the trail was James Barr, a man who had finally seen the pink mist and was strangely at peace with his capture.

  He had confessed.

  The confession was voluntary, fast, and complete. Reacher never laid a hand on him. Barr talked quite freely about the experience. Then he asked questions about the investigation, like he was fascinated by the process. Clearly he had not expected to be caught. Not in a million years. He was simultaneously aggrieved and admiring. He had even acted a little sympathetic when the political snafu eventually broke him loose. Like he was sorry that Reacher’s fine effort
s had come to nothing.

  Fourteen years later he had not confessed.

  There was another difference between this time and the last time, too. But Reacher couldn’t pin it down. Something to do with how hot Kuwait City had been.

  Grigor Linsky used his cell phone and called the Zec. The Zec was the man he worked for. It wasn’t just Zec. It was the Zec. It was a question of respect. The Zec was eighty years old, but he still broke arms if he smelled disrespect. He was like an old bull. He still had his strength and his attitude. He was eighty years old because of his strength and his attitude. Without them he would have died at age twenty. Or later, at thirty, which was about when he went insane and his real name finally slipped his mind.

  “The lawyer went back to her office,” Linsky said. “Reacher turned east off First Street. I laid back and didn’t follow him. But he turned away from the bus depot. Therefore we can assume he’s staying in town. My guess is he checked into the Metropole Palace. There’s nothing else in that direction.”

  The Zec made no reply.

  “Should we do anything?” Linsky asked.

  “How long is he here for?”

  “That depends. Clearly he’s on a mission of mercy.”

  The Zec said nothing.

  “Should we do anything?” Linsky asked again.

  There was a pause. Cellular static, and an old man breathing.

  “We should maybe distract him,” the Zec said. “Or discourage him. I’m told he was a soldier. Therefore he will probably maintain a predictable pattern of behavior. If he’s at the Metropole, he won’t stay in tonight. Not there. No fun for a soldier. He’ll go out somewhere. Probably alone. So there could be an incident. Use your imagination. Make it a big scenario. Don’t use our own people. And make it look natural.”