by Lee Child
I hoped Garber was going to say no, but instead he said, “Slightly circumstantial.”
I said, “Slightly?”
He said, “The timing is unfortunate. Janice May Chapman was killed three days after Bravo Company got back from Kosovo, after their latest trip. They fly in direct from overseas. Kelham has an airstrip. I told you, it’s a big place. They land under cover of darkness, for secrecy’s sake. Then a returning company spends the first two days locked down and debriefing.”
“And then?”
“And then on the third day a returning company gets a week’s leave.”
“And they all go out on the town.”
“Generally.”
“Including Main Street and the blocks behind.”
“That’s where the bars are.”
“And the bars are where they meet the local women.”
“As always.”
“And Janice May Chapman was a local woman.”
“And known to be friendly.”
I said, “Terrific.”
Garber said, “She was raped and mutilated.”
“Mutilated how?”
“I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. She was twenty-seven years old. Jodie is twenty-seven years old, too.”
His only daughter. His only child. Much loved.
I asked, “How is she?”
“She’s fine.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s a lawyer,” he said, like it was a location, not an occupation. Then in turn he asked, “How’s your brother?”
I said, “He’s OK, as far as I know.”
“Still at Treasury?”
“As far as I know.”
“He was a good man,” Garber said, like leaving the army was the same thing as dying.
I said nothing.
Garber asked, “So what would you do, down there in Mississippi?”
This was 1997, remember. I said, “We can’t shut out the local PD. Not under those circumstances. But we can’t assume any level of expertise or resources on their part, either. So we should offer some help. We should send someone down there. We can do all the work on the base. If some Kelham guy did it, we’ll serve him up on a platter. That way justice is done, but we can hide what we need to hide.”
“Not that simple,” Garber said. “It gets worse.”
“How?”
“Bravo Company’s commander is a guy called Reed Riley. You know him?”
“The name rings a bell.”
“And so it should. His father is Carlton Riley.”
I said, “Shit.”
Garber nodded. “The senator. The chairman of the Armed Services Committee. About to be either our best friend or our worst enemy, depending on which way the wind is going to blow. And you know how it is with guys like that. Having an infantry captain for a son is worth a million votes to him. Having a hero for a son is worth twice that. I don’t want to think about what happens if one of young Reed’s guys turns out to be a killer.”
I said, “We need someone at Kelham right now.”
Garber said, “That’s why you and I are having this meeting.”
“When do you want me there?”
“I don’t want you there,” Garber said.
Chapter
5
Garber told me his top pick for the Kelham job wasn’t me. It was a newly minted MP major named Duncan Munro. Military family, Silver Star, Purple Heart, and so on and so forth. He had recently completed some good work in Korea, and was currently doing some great work in Germany. He was five years younger than me, and from what I was hearing he was exactly what I had been five years in the past. I had never met him.
Garber said, “He’s in the air right now. Heading straight down there. ETA late morning tomorrow.”
“Your call,” I said. “I guess.”
“It’s a delicate situation,” he said.
“Evidently,” I said. “Too delicate for me, anyway.”
“Don’t get your panties in a wad. I need you for something else. Something I hope you’ll see as just as important.”
“Like what?”
“Undercover work,” he said. “That’s why I’m happy about your hair. Ragged and unkempt. There are two things we do very badly when we’re undercover. Hair, and shoes. Shoes, you can buy at Goodwill. You can’t buy messy hair at a moment’s notice.”
“Undercover where?”
“Carter Crossing, of course. Down in Mississippi. Off post. You’re going to blow into town like some kind of aimless ex-military bum. You know the type. You’re going to be the kind of guy who feels right at home there, because it’s the kind of environment he’s familiar with. So you’re going to stay put a spell. You’re going to develop a relationship with local law enforcement, and you’re going to use that relationship in a clandestine fashion to make sure that both they and Munro are doing this thing absolutely right.”
“You want me to impersonate a civilian?”
“It’s not that hard. We’re all members of the same species, more or less. You’ll figure it out.”
“Will I be actively investigating?”
“No. You’ll be there to observe and report only. Like a training assessment. You’ve done it before. My eyes and ears. This thing has got to be done absolutely right.”
“OK,” I said.
“Any other questions?”
“When do I leave?”
“Tomorrow morning, first light.”
“And what’s your definition of doing this thing absolutely right?”
Garber paused and shuffled in his chair and didn’t answer that question.
I went back to my quarters and took a shower, but I didn’t shave. Going undercover is like method acting, and Garber was right. I knew the type. Any soldier does. Towns near bases are full of guys who washed out for some reason or other and never got further than a mile. Some stay, and some are forced to move on, and the ones who move on end up in some other town near some other base. The same, but different. It’s what they know. It’s what they’re comfortable with. They retain some kind of ingrained, deep-down military discipline, like old habits, like stray strands of DNA, but they abandon regular grooming. Chapter one, section eight, paragraph two no longer rules their lives. So I didn’t shave, and I didn’t comb my hair either. I just let it dry.
Then I laid stuff out on my bed. I didn’t need to go to the Goodwill for shoes. I had a pair that would do. About twelve years previously I had been in the U.K. and I had bought a pair of brown brogues at an old-fashioned gentleman’s store in a village miles from anywhere. They were big, heavy, substantial things. They were well cared for, but a little worn and creased. Down at heel, literally.
I put them on my bed, and they sat there alone. I had no other personal clothing. None at all. Not even socks. I found an old army T-shirt in a drawer, olive drab, cotton, originally of a hefty grade, now washed pale and as thin as silk. I figured it was the kind of thing a guy might keep around. I put it next to the shoes. Then I hiked over to the PX and poked around the aisles I usually don’t frequent. I found a pair of mud-colored canvas pants and a long-sleeved shirt that was basically maroon, but it had been prewashed so that the seams had faded to a kind of pink. I wasn’t thrilled with it, but it was the only choice in my size. It was reduced in price, which made sense to me, and it looked basically civilian. I had seen people wearing worse things. And it was versatile. I wasn’t sure what the temperatures were going to be, in March in the northeastern corner of Mississippi. If it was warm, I could roll the sleeves up. If it was cold, I could roll them down.
I chose white underwear and khaki socks and then stopped in the toiletries section and found a kind of half-sized travel toothbrush. I liked it. The business end was nested in a clear plastic case, and it pulled out and reversed and clipped back in, to make it full-length and ready to use. It was obviously designed for a pocket. It would be easy to carry and the bristle part would stay clean. A very neat idea.
I sent the clothing straight to the laundry, to age it a little. Nothing ages stuff like on-base laundries. Then I walked off post to a hamburger place for a late lunch. I found an old friend in there, an MP colleague, a guy called Stan Lowrey. We had worked together many times. He was sitting at a table in front of a tray holding the wreckage of a half-pounder and fries. I got my meal and slid in opposite him. He said, “I hear you’re on your way to Mississippi.”
I asked, “Where did you hear that?”
“My sergeant got it from a sergeant in Garber’s office.”
“When?”
“About two hours ago.”
“Terrific,” I said. “I didn’t even know two hours ago. So much for secrecy.”
“My sergeant says you’re going as second fiddle.”
“Your sergeant is right.”
“My sergeant says the lead investigator is some kid.” I nodded. “I’m babysitting.”
“That sucks, Reacher. That blows big time.”
“Only if the kid does it right.”
“Which he might.”
I took a bite of my burger, and a sip of my coffee. I said, “Actually I don’t know if anyone could do it right. There are sensitivities involved. There may be no right way of doing it at all. It could be that Garber is protecting me and sacrificing the kid.”
Lowrey said, “Dream on, my friend. You’re an old horse and Garber is pinch hitting for you in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded. A new star is about to be born. You’re history.”
“You too, then,” I said. “If I’m an old horse, you’re already waiting at the glue factory gate.”
“Exactly,” Lowrey said. “That’s what I’m worried about. I’m going to start looking at the want ads tonight.”
Nothing much happened during the rest of the afternoon. My laundry came back, a little bleached and battered by the giant machines. It was steam-pressed, but a day’s traveling would correct that. I left it on the floor, piled neatly on my shoes. Then my phone rang, and a switchboard operator patched me in to a call from the Pentagon, and I found myself talking to a colonel named John James Frazer. He said he was currently with Senate Liaison, but he preceded that embarrassing announcement with his whole prior combat bio, so I wouldn’t write him off as a jerk. Then he said, “I need to know immediately if there’s the slightest shred or scintilla of a hint or a rumor about anyone in Bravo Company. Immediately, OK? Night or day.”
I said, “And I need to know how the local PD even knows Bravo Company is based at Kelham. I thought it’s supposed to be a secret.”
“They fly in and out on C-5 transports. Noisy airplanes.”
“In the dead of night. So they could be supply runs, for all anyone knows. Beans and bullets.”
“There was a weather problem a month ago. Storms over the Atlantic. They were late. They landed after dawn. They were observed. And it’s a base town anyway. You know how it is. The locals pick up on the patterns. Faces they know, there one month, gone the next. People aren’t dumb.”
“There already are hints and rumors,” I said. “The timing is suggestive. Like you said, people aren’t dumb.”
“The timing could be entirely coincidental.”
“Could be,” I said. “Let’s hope it is.”
Frazer said, “I need to know immediately if there’s anything Captain Riley could have, or should have, or might have, or ought to have known. Anything at all, OK? No delay.”
“Is that an order?”
“It’s a request from a senior officer. Is there a difference?”
“Are you in my chain of command?”
“Consider that I am.”
“OK,” I said.
“Anything at all,” he said again. “To me, immediately and personally. My ears only. Night or day.”
“OK,” I said again.
“There’s a lot riding on this. Do you understand? The stakes are very high.”
“OK,” I said, for the third time.
Then Frazer said, “But I don’t want you to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable.”
I went to bed early, my hair matted, my unshaven face scratchy on the pillow, and the clock in my head woke me at five, two hours before dawn, on Friday, March 7th, 1997. The first day of the rest of my life.
Chapter
6
I showered and dressed in the dark, socks, boxers, pants, my old T, my new shirt. I laced my shoes and put my toothbrush in my pocket with a pack of gum and a roll of bills. I left everything else behind. No ID, no wallet, no watch, no nothing. Method acting. I figured that was how I would do it, if I was doing it for real.
Then I headed out. I walked up the post’s main drag and got to the guardhouse and Garber came out to meet me in the open. He had been waiting for me. Six o’clock in the morning. Not yet light. Garber was in BDUs, presumably fresh on less than an hour ago, but he looked like he had spent that hour rolling around in the dirt on a farm. We stood under the glow of a yellow vapor light. The air was very cold.
Garber said, “You don’t have a bag?”
I said, “Why would I have a bag?”
“People carry bags.”
“What for?”
“For their spare clothing.”
“I don’t own spare clothing. I had to buy these things especially.”
“You chose that shirt?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s pink.”
“Only in places.”
“You’re going to Mississippi. They’ll think you’re queer. They’ll beat you to death.”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“What are you going to do when those clothes get dirty?”
“I don’t know. Buy some more, I suppose.”
“How are you planning to get to Kelham?”
“I figured I’d walk into town and get a Greyhound bus to Memphis. Then hitchhike the rest of the way. I imagine that’s how people do these things.”
“Have you eaten breakfast?”
“I’m sure I’ll find a diner.”
Garber paused a beat and asked, “Did John James Frazer get you on the phone yesterday? From Senate Liaison?”
I said, “Yes, he did.”
“How did he sound?”
“Like we’re in big trouble unless Janice May Chapman was killed by another civilian.”
“Then let’s hope she was.”
“Is Frazer in my chain of command?”
“Probably safest to assume he is.”
“What kind of a guy is he?”
“He’s a guy under a whole lot of stress right now. Five years’ work could go down the pan, just when it gets important.”
“He told me not to do anything that makes me feel uncomfortable.”
“Bullshit,” Garber said. “You’re not in the army to feel comfortable.”
I said, “What some guy on leave does after he gets drunk in a bar is not a company commander’s fault.”
“Only in the real world,” Garber said. “But this is politics we’re talking about.” Then he went quiet again, just for a moment, as if he had many more points to make and was trying to decide which one of them to start with. But in the end all he said was, “Well, have a safe trip, Reacher. Stay in touch, OK?”
* * *
The walk to the Greyhound depot was long but not difficult. Just a case of putting one foot in front of the other. I was passed by a few vehicles. None of them stopped to offer me a ride. They might have if I had been in uniform. Off-post citizens are usually well disposed toward their military neighbors, in the heartland of America. I took their neglect as proof that my civilian disguise was convincing. I was glad to pass the test. I had never posed as a civilian before. It was unknown territory. Something new for me. I had never even been a civilian. I suppose technically I was, for eighteen years between birth and West Point, but those years had been spent inside a blur of Marine Corps bases, one after another, because of my father’s career, and living on post a
s part of a military family had nothing to do with civilian life. Absolutely nothing at all. So that morning’s walk felt fresh and experimental to me. The sun came up behind me and the air went warm and dewy and a ground mist rose off the road to my knees. I walked on through it and thought of my old pal Stan Lowrey, back on the base. I wondered if he had looked at the want ads. I wondered if he needed to. I wondered if I needed to.
There was a coach diner a half-mile short of downtown and I stopped there for breakfast. I had coffee, of course, and scrambled eggs. I felt I integrated pretty well, visually and behaviorally. There were six other customers in there. All of them were civilians, all of them were men, and all of them were ragged and unkempt by the standards required to maintain uniformity within a military population. All six of them were wearing hats on their heads. Six mesh caps, printed with the names of what I took to be agricultural equipment manufacturers, or seed merchants. I wondered if I should have gotten such a hat. I hadn’t thought about it, and I hadn’t seen any in the PX.
I finished my meal and paid the waitress and walked on bareheaded to where the Greyhounds came and went. I bought a ticket and sat on a bench and thirty minutes later I was in the back of a bus, heading south and west.
Chapter
7
The bus ride was magnificent, in its way. Not a radical distance, no more than a small portion of the giant continent, no more than an inch on a one-page map, but it took six hours. The view out the window changed so slowly it seemed never to change at all, but even so the landscape at the end of the journey was very different than at the beginning. Memphis was a slick city, laced with wet streets, boxed in by low buildings painted muted pastel colors, heaving and bustling with furtive unexplained activity. I got out at the depot and stood a moment in the bright afternoon and listened to the hum and throb of people at work and at play. Then I kept the sun on my right shoulder and walked south and east. First priority was the mouth of a wide road leading out of town, and second priority was something to eat.
I found myself in a built-up and insalubrious quarter full of pawn shops and porn shops and bail bond offices, and I figured getting a ride there would be next to impossible. The same driver that might stop on the open road would never stop in that part of town. So I put my second priority first and fueled up at a greasy spoon café, and resigned myself to a lengthy hike thereafter. I wanted a corner with a road sign, a big green rectangle marked with an arrow and Oxford or Tupelo or Columbus. In my experience a guy standing under such a sign with his thumb out left no doubt about what he wanted and where he was going. No explanation was required. No need for a driver to stop and ask, which helped a lot. People are bad at saying no face to face. Often they just drive on by, purely to avoid the possibility. Always better to reduce confusion.