by Lee Child
“Works for me. But which neighborhood? Do you know them all?”
“I suppose we’ll have to rent another car. We should get GPS.”
“Unless he’s in the office and willing to meet us there. We could take a cab.”
“We’ll get in too early. He won’t be there yet.”
“OK, we’ll call his cell when we land and we’ll let him make the decision for us. Coffee shop or office. Rental car or cab.”
“If he agrees to see us at all.”
“Two hundred deaths. That’s a story.”
“Which he’s already heard, according to you. When Keever’s client called him. Who seems not to have made much of an impression.”
“There’s a difference between hearing and listening. And that’s our problem. I doubt if Westwood even knows what he’s got. He didn’t listen, and his notes don’t seem to mean much. It’s going to be like picking a lock with spaghetti.”
“What if we can’t?”
“No such word.”
“You’re optimistic this morning.”
“That’s an inevitable consequence. I had a very pleasant night.”
“Me too.”
“Good to know.”
“What do your friends call you?”
“Reacher.”
“Not Jack?”
He shook his head. “Even my mother called me Reacher.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“I had a brother, name of Joe.”
“Where is he now?”
“Nowhere. He died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“What did your mom call him?”
“Joe.”
“And she called you Reacher?”
“It’s my name, just as much as Jack. You mean your friends don’t call you Chang?”
“I was Officer Chang, and then Special Agent Chang, but that was only at work.”
“So what do they call you?”
“Michelle,” she said. “Or Shell, sometimes, for short. Which I quite like. It’s a nice diminutive. Except not with my last name. Shell Chang sounds somewhere between a Korean porn star and an oil exploration company in the South China Sea and a roll of quarters being dumped in a cash register.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “Michelle it is. Or Chang.”
And then the plane took off, and chased the dawn westward over the mountains.
Seven hours by road to the east, in Mother’s Rest, dawn had already happened. The morning train had been and gone. The breakfast rush in the diner was easing. The guy with two shirts had opened his store. The spare-parts guy had opened his too, and was already crammed in behind his counter, sorting invoices into piles. The Cadillac driver was tallying receipts for his seven different accounts, Western Union, MoneyGram, faxing, photocopying, FedEx, UPS, and DHL. The Moynahan who had gotten kicked in the balls and had his gun taken was still home, caring for his brother, who was still a little dazed.
And the one-eyed clerk was coming out of the motel office, and standing and sniffing the air, and glancing all around, at the inside perimeter of the horseshoe, at the parking spaces, at the sidewalk passing the first-floor rooms, at the walkway passing the second-floor rooms. A leisurely visual inspection. Of the light bulbs, all working. Of the lawn chairs, all neatly lined up. All there. All quiet. All serene. 214 was empty. 215 was empty.
They weren’t coming back, he thought.
All good.
LAX arrivals was jammed, so Reacher and Chang had to fight their way out to the curb to find a quiet spot to make their call. Chang hid behind a pillar and dialed. And woke Westwood up. Not an early starter. She was embarrassed at first, then placatory, and then she got down to business. She introduced herself again, and said she needed to meet, because something that had looked small to both of them was suddenly not so small anymore. She said there was a credible figure of two hundred deaths. She said as an ex–FBI agent she was taking it seriously. She said her colleague was from the military, and he was also taking it seriously. She said sure, the book rights were still available.
Then she listened to an address, and hung up.
“Coffee shop,” she said. “In Inglewood.”
Reacher said, “That’s close by. When?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“We should take a cab. We don’t have time to rent a car.”
Twenty miles south of Mother’s Rest, the man with the ironed jeans and the blow-dried hair took a call on his land line. Triple-A, but not exactly. Their man Hackett had logged the first contact. A cell-to-cell phone call, six minutes long, between Westwood, who was presumably at home, given his hours, and a woman who gave her name as Chang, who was at the airport, judging by the background noise, and who was with a male colleague she described as military. Deaths had been mentioned, and a rendezvous set up, in a coffee shop in Inglewood, which Hackett would monitor.
The cab line was long but brisk, and Inglewood was just the other side of the 405 from the airport, so they got to the designated coffee shop with time to spare. The place was one of many lining the street. Most had tiny outdoor tables and Italian words on their chalk boards, but Westwood’s pick didn’t. It was a straight-up vinyl-and-linoleum antique, faded over the decades to a dull khaki color. It was about a quarter full, with men on their own, all of them silently reading newspapers, or staring into space. None of them looked like a science editor.
“We’re early,” Chang said. “He’ll be late.”
So they took a booth, sitting side by side at a laminate table, on a bench upholstered in tuck-and-roll vinyl, that might have started out deep red and glittery, but was now as khaki as everything else. They ordered coffee, one hot, one iced. They waited. The place was quiet. Just the turning of newspaper pages and the clink of ironstone cups on ironstone saucers.
Five minutes.
Then eventually Westwood arrived. He looked nothing like Reacher expected, but the reality fit the bill just as well as the preconceptions had. He was an outdoors type, not a lab rat, and sturdy rather than pencil-necked. He looked like a naturalist or an explorer. He had short but unruly hair, fair going gray, and a beard of the same length and color. He was red in the face from sunburn and had squint lines around his eyes. He was forty-five, maybe. He was wearing clothing put together from high-tech fabrics and many zippers, but it was all old and creased. He had hiking boots on his feet, with speckled laces like miniature mountain-climbing ropes. He was toting a canvas bag about as big as a mail carrier’s.
He paused inside the door, and identified Chang instantly, because she was the only woman in the place. He slid in opposite, across the worn vinyl, and hauled his bag after him. He put his forearm on the table and said, “I assume your other colleague is still missing. Mr. Keever, was it?”
Chang nodded and said, “We hit the wall, as far as he’s concerned. We’re dead-ended. We can trace him so far, but no further.”
“Have you called the cops?”
“No.”
“So I guess my first question is, why not?”
“It would be a missing persons report. That’s all, at this stage. He’s an adult, gone three days. They might take the report, but they wouldn’t do anything with it. It would go straight to the back burner.”
“Two hundred deaths might get them interested.”
“We can’t prove anything. We don’t know who, why, when, where, or how.”
“So I’m buying you breakfast because there’s a guy you haven’t even reported missing, and two hundred deaths you know nothing about?”
“You’re buying us breakfast because you’re getting the book rights. You can buy all the breakfasts.”
“Except so far this breakfast alone is worth more than the book rights. So far the book rights and fifty cents will get me a cup of coffee.”
Reacher said, “You’re a scientist. You need to think about it scientifically.”
“In what way?”
“Statistically,
maybe. And linguistically. With a little sociology thrown in. Plus a deep and innate understanding of human nature. Think about the number two hundred. Sounds like a nice round figure, but it isn’t, really. No one says two hundred purely at random. People say a hundred, or a thousand. Or hundreds or thousands. Two hundred deaths sounds specific to me. Like a true number. Maybe rounded up from the high 180s or 190s, but it sounds to me like there’s information behind it. Enough to keep me interested, anyway. For instance. Speaking as an investigator.”
Westwood said nothing.
Reacher said, “Plus we assume the cops already heard the story, and already dismissed it.”
Westwood nodded. “Because you assume Mr. Keever’s client called everyone from the White House downward. Including me.”
“Which is where we have to start. With the client. We need to find the guy. We need to hear the story over again, from the beginning, like Keever did. Then maybe we can predict what happened next.”
“I get hundreds of calls. I told you.”
“How many?”
“Point taken.”
“And you note them all down. You told us that, too.”
“Not in any great detail.”
“We might be able to puzzle it out.”
“You would need a name, at least.”
“I think we have a name.”
Chang glanced at Reacher.
“Possibly,” Reacher said to her. Then he turned back to Westwood. He said, “It’s probably not a real name, but it might be a start. You told us sooner or later you block the nuisance calls. When they wear out their welcome. Suppose a guy got frustrated by that, and tried to start over by coming back to you under a different name and number?”
“Might happen,” Westwood said.
Reacher turned to Chang and said, “Show him Keever’s bookmark.”
Chang dug the paper out of her pocket and smoothed it on the table. The 323 phone number, and Mother’s Rest—Maloney.
Westwood said, “That’s my number. No doubt about that.”
Reacher said, “We took it to mean there was a guy in Mother’s Rest named Maloney, who was of interest in some way. But there’s no such guy. We’re sure of that. We asked, and the answers weren’t evasive. They were dismissive, and even a little confused. So what if you had gotten sick of Keever’s client, whatever his name is, so he decided to start over, and he came back to you under the name of Maloney? And then he called Keever again, and as always told him to check with you, for corroboration, but this time warned him the issue wouldn’t be filed under his real name anymore, but under the fake name Maloney? Maybe that’s what this note means.”
“Maybe.”
“You got a third interpretation?”
“I could check,” Westwood said.
“We’d appreciate it. We’re clutching at straws here.”
“No shit. Keever’s notes are as bad as mine.”
“They’re all we’ve got.”
“But even so, with a missing guy and a rumor about two hundred deaths, don’t you think you should at least try the cops again?”
“I was a cop,” Reacher said. “And I knew plenty more. I never met one who went looking for extra work. So right now they wouldn’t listen. Not yet. I can guarantee that. Just like you didn’t.”
“I could check,” Westwood said again. “But I don’t see how a fake name will help.”
“By leading us to the real name.”
“How can it do that? It conceals the real name.”
“Check who you blocked just before Maloney started calling. That’s the client.”
“We’ll find more than one candidate. I block lots of people.”
“We’ll figure it out. Geography could be significant. We know he hired an investigator from Oklahoma City, and we know he reads the LA Times. That might narrow it down some.”
Westwood shook his head. “My phone number ain’t exactly easy to find. I don’t pay Google to put it front and center. If your guy is good enough with computers to dig it up off the internet, then he’s reading the paper on-line. That’s for sure. Guys like that haven’t bought physical print for a decade. He could be living anywhere.”
“Good to know,” Reacher said.
“Meet me in my office in an hour. In the Times building.”
Chang nodded and said, “I know where it is.”
Then the waitress came by and Westwood ordered breakfast, and Reacher and Chang left him alone to eat it.
Less than ten minutes later, twenty miles south of Mother’s Rest, the man with the ironed jeans and the blow-dried hair took a second call on his land line. His contact told him Hackett had observed the meeting in the Inglewood coffee shop. He had not been close enough to hear much detail, but he had caught Keever’s name, and he had lip-read Chang say they had hit the wall, where he was concerned. Then at the end of the conversation he had inferred a second rendezvous had been suggested, at a location he hadn’t caught, but he had heard Chang saying she knew where it was. He would stay on Westwood for the time being, who would no doubt lead him there.
Chapter 25
The LA Times was in a fine old art-deco building on West 1st and Spring in downtown Los Angeles. It had security worthy of a government agency. There was an X-ray belt, and a metal detector. Reacher wasn’t sure why. Maybe an inflated sense of importance. He doubted if the Times was top of anyone’s target list. Probably not even on the fourth or fifth page. But there was no choice. He dumped his coins in a bowl and stepped through the hoop. Chang was slower. She still had her suitcase, and her coat.
But eventually they were through, and they got passes from a desk, and rode up in an elevator. Westwood’s office turned out to be a square cream room with shelves of books and stacks of newspapers. There was a handsome old desk under the window, with a two-screen computer on it. Westwood was in a chair in front of it, reading e-mail. His enormous canvas bag was dumped on the floor, bellied open, full of more books and more newspapers and a metal laptop computer. Outside the door the hall was loud with the hum of busy people doing busy things. Outside the window the sky was bright with Southern California’s perpetual sunshine.
Westwood said, “I’ll be right with you. Take a seat.”
Something in his voice.
Taking a seat required a little effort. Reacher and Chang cleared stacks of magazines and papers off two spare chairs. Westwood closed his e-mail program and turned around. He said, “My legal department isn’t happy. There are confidentiality issues at stake. Our database is private.”
Chang asked, “What kind of downside do they foresee?”
“Unspecified. They’re lawyers. Everything is downside.”
“It’s an important investigation.”
“They say important investigations come with warrants and subpoenas. Or at least missing persons reports.”
Reacher said, “Why did you talk to your lawyers?”
Westwood said, “Because I’m required to.”
“Did you talk to your managing editor?”
“He doesn’t see a story. We ran background on Keever. He’s on a bender somewhere. He’s a washed-up old gumshoe.”
Chang said nothing.
Reacher said, “I never met the guy. But I met plenty like him. Above average in every way, except loose with impulse control. But those impulses came from the best of intentions. And however washed up he was, he was James Bond compared to the population of Mother’s Rest. But still they got him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But suppose they did. Suppose there’s something weird out there, with two hundred dead people. That’s a story, right? That’s something the LA Times would eat up with a spoon. You could run it for weeks. You could get a Pulitzer. You could get on TV. You could get a movie deal.”
“Get back to me as soon as you’ve got something solid.”
“What do you think the chances are, of that happening?”
“A hundred to one.”
“No
t two hundred?”
“Your theories aren’t evidence.”
“Here’s another theory. We walk out of here, leaving behind the hundred-to-one possibility there’s a big story out there, but because we’re gone it’s no longer a Times exclusive anymore, which means if the hundred-to-one pays off and it breaks, there’s going to be a crazy scramble, with all the papers competing for pole position. So if you’re a smart science editor, even though it’s only a hundred to one, you can see a tiny advantage in using what you know so far to get somewhat prepared ahead of time. So my guess is as soon as we’re back in the elevator, you’re going to check the database for calls from a guy named Maloney. Just to put your mind at rest.”
Westwood said nothing.
Reacher said, “So what difference would it make if we were still in the room?”
No response for a long moment. Then Westwood turned his chair to face his screens, and he clicked the mouse and typed a few letters in two different boxes. User ID and password, Reacher figured. The database, hopefully. Chang leaned forward. The screen showed a search page. Some kind of proprietary software, no doubt suitable for the job at hand, but ugly. Westwood clicked on a bunch of options. Isolating his own notes, possibly. To avoid irrelevant results. Maybe there were a hundred newsworthy Maloneys in LA. Maybe there were two hundred. Sports stars, businesspeople, actors, musicians, civic dignitaries.
Westwood said, “All theories should be tested. That’s a central part of the scientific method.”
He typed Maloney.
He clicked the mouse.
He got three hits.
The database showed contact made by a caller named Maloney on three separate occasions. The most recent was just shy of a month previously, and the second was three weeks before that, and the oldest was two weeks before the second. A five-week envelope, all told, four weeks ago. The incoming phone number was the same on all three occasions. It had a 501 area code, which no one recognized.
Westwood had made no notes about the subject or the content of any of the three conversations. Instead he had simply routed name, number, day, and time straight to a folder marked C.
“Which is?” Reacher asked.