Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  The door sagged open.

  No alarm.

  Reacher went in first. Took two steps and stopped. Inside, the hum he had sensed was louder. And there was a smell in the air. Both were unmistakable. He had heard similar sounds and smelled similar smells more times than he wanted to remember.

  The hum was a million flies going crazy.

  The smell was dead flesh, rotting and decomposing, leaking putrid fluids and gases.

  Neagley and O’Donnell crowded in behind him. And stopped.

  “We knew anyway,” O’Donnell said, maybe to himself. “This is not a shock.”

  “It’s always a shock,” Neagley said. “I hope it always will be.”

  She covered her mouth and nose. Reacher stepped to the kitchen door. There was nothing on the hallway floor. But the smell was worse out there, and the noise was louder. There were stray flies in the air, big and blue and shiny, buzzing and darting and hitting the walls with tiny papery sounds. They were in and out of a door that was standing partially open.

  “The bathroom,” Reacher said.

  The house was laid out like Calvin Franz’s, but it was bigger because the lots were larger in Santa Ana than they had been in Santa Monica. Cheaper real estate, more scope. There was a center hallway and each room was a real room, not just a corner of an open plan space. Kitchen in back, living room in front, separated by a walk-in closet. On the other side of the hallway, two bedrooms separated by a bathroom.

  Impossible to say where the smell was coming from. It filled the house.

  But the flies were interested in the bathroom.

  The air was hot and foul. No sound, except the insane thrashing of the flies. On porcelain, on tile, on papered walls, on the hollow wood of the door.

  “Stay here,” Reacher said.

  He walked down the hallway. Two paces. Three. He stopped outside the bathroom. Nudged the door with his foot. An angry black cloud of flies billowed out at him. He turned away and batted the air. Turned back. Used his foot again and pushed the door all the way open. Fanned the air and peered through the buzzing insects.

  There was a body on the floor.

  It was a dog.

  Once it had been a German shepherd, big, beautiful, maybe a hundred pounds, maybe a hundred and ten. It was lying on its side. Its hair was dead and matted. Its mouth was open. Flies were feasting on its tongue and its nose and its eyes.

  Reacher stepped right into the bathroom. Flies swarmed around his shins. There was nothing in the tub. The toilet was empty. All the water was gone from the throat. There were towels undisturbed on the rails. Dried brown stains on the floor. Not blood. Just leakage from failed sphincters.

  Reacher backed out of the bathroom.

  “It’s his dog,” he said. “Check the other rooms and the garage.”

  There was nothing in the other rooms or the garage. No signs of struggle or disturbance, no sign of Swan himself. They regrouped in the hallway. The flies had settled back to their business in the bathroom.

  “What happened here?” Neagley asked.

  “Swan went out,” O’Donnell said. “Didn’t come back. The dog starved to death.”

  “It died of thirst,” Reacher said.

  Nobody spoke.

  “The water bowl in the kitchen is dry,” Reacher said. “Then it drank what it could from the toilet. Probably lasted about a week.”

  “Awful,” Neagley said.

  “You bet. I like dogs. If I lived anywhere I’d have three or four. We’re going to rent a helicopter and we’re going to throw these guys out one by one in little pieces.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  O’Donnell said, “We’re going to need more than we’ve got now.”

  Reacher said, “So let’s start looking.”

  They took scraps of paper towel from the kitchen and balled them up and shoved them up their noses to combat the smell. Settled down to a long and serious search. O’Donnell took the kitchen. Neagley took the living room. Reacher took Swan’s bedroom.

  They found nothing of any significance in any of those three places. Quite apart from the dog’s predicament, it was clear that Swan had gone out expecting to return. The dishwasher was half-loaded and had not been run. There was food in the refrigerator and trash in the kitchen pail. Pajamas were folded under the pillow. A half-finished book was resting on the night table. It had one of Swan’s own business cards jammed in it as a placeholder: Anthony Swan, U.S. Army (Retired), Assistant Director of Corporate Security, New Age Defense Systems, Los Angeles, California. On the bottom of the card was an e-mail address and the same direct-line phone number that Reacher and Neagley had tried so many times.

  “What exactly does New Age make?” O’Donnell asked.

  “Money,” Reacher said. “Although less than it used to, I guess.”

  “Does it have a product or is it all research?”

  “The woman we saw claimed they’re manufacturing something somewhere.”

  “What exactly?”

  “We have no idea.”

  The three of them tackled the second bedroom together. The one at the back of the house, with the draped slider and the step down to the empty patio. The room had a bed in it but was clearly used as a den most of the time. There was a desk and a phone and a file cabinet and a wall of shelves piled high with the kind of junk that a sentimental person accumulates.

  They started with the desk. Three pairs of eyes, three separate assessments. They found nothing. They moved on to the file cabinet. It was full of the kind of routine paperwork any homeowner has. Property taxes, insurance, canceled checks, paid bills, receipts. There was a personal section. Social Security, state and federal income taxes, a contract of employment from New Age Defense Systems, paycheck stubs. It looked like Swan had made a decent living. In a month he had pulled down what Reacher could make last a year and a half.

  There was stuff from a veterinarian. The dog had been female. Her name had been Maisi and her shots had all been up-to-date. She had been old but in good health. There was stuff from an organization called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Swan had been a contributor. Big money. Therefore a worthwhile cause, Reacher guessed. Swan was nobody’s fool.

  They checked the shelves. Found a shoe box full of photographs. They were random snaps from Swan’s life and career. Maisi the dog was in some of them. Reacher and Neagley and O’Donnell were in others, and Franz, and Karla Dixon, and Sanchez and Orozco, and Stan Lowrey. All of them long ago in the past, younger, different in crucial ways, blazing with youth and vigor and preoccupation. There were random pairings and trios from offices and squad rooms all over the world. One was a formal group portrait, all nine of them in Class A uniforms after a ceremony for a unit citation. Reacher didn’t remember who had taken the picture. An official photographer, probably. He didn’t remember what the citation had been for, either.

  “We need to get going,” Neagley said. “Neighbors might have seen us.”

  “We’ve got probable cause,” O’Donnell said. “A friend who lives alone, no answer when we knocked on the door, a bad smell from inside.”

  Reacher stepped to the desk and picked up the phone. Hit redial. There was a rapid sequence of electronic blips as the circuit remembered the last number called. Then a purring ring tone. Then Angela Franz answered. Reacher could hear Charlie in the background. He put the phone down.

  “The last call he made was to Franz,” he said. “At home in Santa Monica.”

  “Reporting for duty,” O’Donnell said. “We knew that already. Doesn’t help us.”

  “Nothing here helps us,” Neagley said.

  “But what isn’t here might,” Reacher said. “His piece of the Berlin Wall isn’t here. There’s no box of stuff from his desk at New Age.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “It might establish a time line. You get canned, you box up your stuff, you throw it in the trunk of your car, how long do you leave it there before you br
ing it in the house and deal with it?”

  “A day or two, maybe,” O’Donnell said. “A guy like Swan, he’s extremely pissed when it happens, but fundamentally he’s a squared-away personality. He’d suck it up and move on fast enough.”

  “Two days?”

  “Max.”

  “So all of this went down within two days of when New Age let him go.”

  “How does that help us?” Neagley asked again.

  “No idea,” Reacher said. “But the more we know the luckier we’ll get.”

  They left through the kitchen and closed the door but didn’t relock it. No point. The broken glass made it superfluous. They followed the slab path around the side of the garage to the driveway. Headed back to the curb. It was a quiet neighborhood. A dormitory. Nothing was moving. Reacher scanned left and right for signs of nosy neighbors and saw none. No onlookers, no furtive eyes behind twitching drapes.

  But he did see a tan Crown Victoria parked forty yards away.

  Facing them.

  A guy behind the wheel.

  22

  Reacher said, “Come to a casual stop and turn around like you’re taking one last look at the house. Make conversation.”

  O’Donnell turned.

  “Looks like the married officers’ quarters at Fort Hood,” he said.

  “Apart from the mail box,” Reacher said.

  Neagley turned.

  “I like it,” she said. “The mail box, I mean.”

  Reacher said, “There’s a tan Crown Vic parked on the curb forty yards west. It’s tailing us. Tailing Neagley, to be precise. It was there when I met her on Sunset and it was there again outside Franz’s place. Now it’s here.”

  O’Donnell asked, “Any idea who it is?”

  “None at all,” Reacher said. “But I think it’s time to find out.”

  “Like we used to?”

  Reacher nodded. “Exactly like we used to. I’ll drive.”

  They took one last look at Swan’s house and then they turned and walked slowly back to the curb. They slid into O’Donnell’s rental, Reacher in the driver’s seat, Neagley next to him in the front, O’Donnell behind him in the back. No seat belts.

  “Don’t hurt my car,” O’Donnell said. “I didn’t get the extra insurance.”

  “You should have,” Reacher said. “Always a wise precaution.”

  He started the engine and eased away from the curb. Checked the view ahead, checked the mirror.

  Nothing coming.

  He spun the wheel and stamped on the gas and pulled a fast U-turn across the width of the road. Hit the gas again and accelerated thirty yards. Jammed on the brakes and O’Donnell jumped out a yard in front of the Crown Vic and Reacher hit the gas and then the brake again and stopped dead level with the Crown Vic’s driver’s door. O’Donnell was already at the passenger window. Reacher jumped out and O’Donnell shattered the passenger glass with his knuckles and chased the driver out the other side of the car straight into Reacher’s arms. Reacher hit him once in the gut and then again in the face. Fast and hard. The guy slammed back against the side of his car and went down on his knees. Reacher picked his spot and hit him a third time, a solid elbow against the side of his head. The guy fell sideways, slowly, like a bulldozed tree. He finished up jammed in the space between the Crown Vic’s sill and the road. Sprawled out on his back, inert, unconscious, bleeding heavily from a broken nose.

  “Well, that still works,” O’Donnell said.

  “As long as I do the hard part,” Reacher said.

  Neagley took hold of the loose folds of the guy’s sport coat and flipped him on his side, so that the blood from his nose would pool on the blacktop rather than in the back of his throat. No point in drowning him. Then she pulled the flap of his coat open, looking for a pocket.

  And then she stopped.

  Because the guy was wearing a shoulder holster. An old well-used item, made of worn black leather. There was a Glock 17 in it. He was wearing a belt. The belt had a pouch for a spare magazine on it. And a pancake holder with a pair of stainless-steel handcuffs in it.

  Police issue.

  Reacher glanced inside the Crown Vic. There were pebbles of broken glass all over the passenger seat. There was a radio mounted under the dash.

  Not a taxicab radio.

  “Shit,” Reacher said. “We just took down a cop.”

  “You did the hard part,” O’Donnell said.

  Reacher crouched and put his fingers against the guy’s neck. Felt for his pulse. It was there, strong and regular. The guy was breathing. His nose was busted bad, which would be an aesthetic problem later, but he hadn’t been very good-looking to start with.

  “Why was he tailing us?” Neagley said.

  “We’ll work that out later,” Reacher said. “When we’re a long way from here.”

  “Why did you hit him so hard?”

  “I was upset about the dog.”

  “This guy didn’t do that.”

  “I know that now.”

  Neagley dug through the guy’s pockets. Came out with a leather ID folder. There was a chrome-plated badge pinned inside it, opposite a laminated card behind a milky plastic window.

  “His name is Thomas Brant,” she said. “He’s an LA County deputy.”

  “This is Orange County,” O’Donnell said. “He’s outside of his jurisdiction. As he was on Sunset and in Santa Monica.”

  “Think that will help us?”

  “Not very much.”

  Reacher said, “Let’s get him comfortable and get the hell out of here.”

  O’Donnell took Brant’s feet and Reacher took his shoulders and they piled him into the rear seat of his car. They stretched him out and arranged him and left him in what medics call the recovery position, on his side, one leg drawn up, able to breathe, unlikely to choke. The Crown Vic was spacious. The engine was off and there was plenty of fresh air coming in through the broken window.

  “He’ll be OK,” O’Donnell said.

  “He’ll have to be,” Reacher said.

  They closed the door on him and turned back to O’Donnell’s rental. It was still right there in the middle of the street, three doors open, engine still running. Reacher got in the back. O’Donnell drove. Neagley sat next to him. The polite voice inside the GPS set about guiding them back toward the freeway.

  “We should return this car,” Neagley said. “Right now. And then my Mustang. He’ll have gotten both the plate numbers.”

  “And then do what for transport?” Reacher asked.

  “Your turn to rent something.”

  “I don’t have a driver’s license.”

  “Then we’ll have to take cabs. We have to break the link.”

  “That means changing hotels, too.”

  “So be it.”

  The GPS wouldn’t allow adjustment on the fly. A liability issue. O’Donnell pulled over and stopped and altered the destination from the Beverly Wilshire to the Hertz lot at LAX. The unit took the change in its stride. There was a second’s delay while a Calculating Route bar spooled up and then the patient voice came back and told O’Donnell to turn around and head west instead of east, toward the 405 instead of the 5. Traffic was OK through the subdivisions and heavy on the freeway. Progress was slow.

  “Tell me about yesterday,” Reacher said to Neagley.

  “What about it?”

  “What you did.”

  “I flew into LAX and rented the car. Drove to the hotel on Wilshire. Checked in. Worked for an hour. Then I drove up to the Denny’s on Sunset. Waited for you.”

  “You must have been tailed all the way from the airport.”

  “Clearly. The question is, why?”

  “No, that’s the second question. The first question is, how? Who knew when and where you were coming in?”

  “The cop, obviously. He put a flag against my name and Homeland Security tipped him off as soon as I bought my ticket.”

  “OK, why?”

  “He’s working on
Franz. LA County deputies. I’m a known associate.”

  “We all are.”

  “I was the first to arrive.”

  “So are we suspects?”

  “Maybe. In the absence of any others.”

  “How stupid are they?”

  “They’re about normal. Even we looked at known associates if we struck out everywhere else.”

  Reacher said, “You do not mess with the special investigators.”

  “Correct,” Neagley said. “But we just messed with the LA County deputies. Big time. I hope they don’t have a similar slogan.”

  “You can bet your ass they do.”

  LAX was a gigantic, sprawling mess. Like every airport Reacher had ever seen it was permanently half-finished. O’Donnell threaded through construction zones and perimeter roads and made it to the car rental returns. The different organizations were all lined up, the red one, the green one, the blue one, and finally the Hertz yellow. O’Donnell parked on the end of a long nose-to-tail line and a guy in a company jacket rushed up and scanned a barcode in the rear window with a handheld reader. That was it, vehicle returned, rental over. Chain broken.

  “Now what?” O’Donnell said.

  Neagley said, “Now we take the shuttle bus to the terminal and we find a cab. Then we check out of the hotel and the two of us come back here with my Mustang. Reacher can find a new hotel and start work on those numbers. OK?”

  But Reacher didn’t reply. He was staring across the lot, through the rental office’s plate glass windows. At the line of people inside.

  He was smiling. “What?” Neagley said. “Reacher, what?” “In there,” Reacher said. “Fourth in line. See her?” “Who?” “Small woman, dark hair? I’m pretty sure that’s Karla Dixon.”

  23

  Reacher and Neagley and O’Donnell hurried across the lot, getting surer with every step. By the time they were ten feet from the office windows they were absolutely certain. It was Karla Dixon. She was unmistakable. Dark and comparatively small, a happy woman who thought the worst of people. She was right there, now third in line. Her body language said she was simultaneously impatient with and resigned to the wait. As always she looked relaxed but never quite still, always burning energy, always giving the impression that twenty-four hours in the day were not enough for her. She was thinner than Reacher remembered. She was dressed in tight black jeans and a black leather jacket. Her thick black hair was cut short. She had a black leather Tumi roll-on next to her and a black leather briefcase slung across her shoulder.