by Lee Child
“You think?”
“We already beat Hackett. He went down easy. Was he the best you had? I hope not, for your sake. Because you’re next. We know your name, and we know where you live. And we’re on the way. The time for looking over your shoulder starts now.”
There was a long indrawn breath on the other end of the line, as if more words were coming, perhaps many, but in the end none were spoken. Instead the call cut off, and Reacher heard nothing more. He pictured the electronic chip being pried out of the phone, being snapped in two by a blunt thumbnail, the pieces being dumped in the trash.
Chang asked, “Who was he?”
Reacher said, “He didn’t talk much. Only nine words. But he sounded big and heavy, and Russian, and fairly verbal, and reasonably smart.”
“Russian?”
“From around there. Georgia, or Ukraine. One of those new countries.”
“Verbal, with only nine words?”
“I told him I wasn’t Hackett, and he said, I see. Measured, and calm. Or said in order to appear measured and calm. This is a guy who understands how words can mean all kinds of different things.”
“Do we really know his name and where he lives?”
“I might have been glamorizing our situation a little. Or exaggerating for effect. As in, we fake it till we make it. Because we will know, sooner or later. Somehow. Maybe your phone guy could list his calls by location. There’s only a week’s worth, on that number. He can’t have strayed far from home. We could zero in.”
“Would the information lead to physical harm or serious injury?”
“That would be its sole purpose.”
“Then my phone guy won’t do it. That’s his deal.”
“Do you have to tell him?”
“He would put two and two together after the fact. Then he would go work for someone else. I can’t let that happen.”
“Even for Keever?”
“Keever would understand. So should you. You had a code. A deal is a deal.”
“Works for me,” Reacher said. “I guess. I expect we can figure it out some other way. After we talk to the sister. Who might figure it out for us. Depending on how much she knows. And whether it means anything to us.”
“Nothing else does. This is not a small thing in a wheat field anymore. Hackett is from California, and he has armorers in Illinois, and his boss is in Arizona. This is a nationwide organization. They’ll be watching the airport. You told them we’re coming.”
“That’s why I told them. We won’t find them otherwise.”
“It’s a risk.”
“Everything is a risk. Getting on the plane is a risk. All the other passengers have phones. Think of the songs and the pictures. Think of the extra mass.”
In the event the jet engines coped perfectly with the challenge the on-board phones presented. Their plane took off smoothly and climbed away, just like every other plane that day at America’s busiest airport. Reacher was confident they had not been followed, certainly airside. But their real names were in an airline’s computer, and their ETA was widely advertised. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
They had seats together over the leading edge of the wing. Window and middle. Not the exit row. That was two behind them. Reacher was at the window. Chang had taken the middle, voluntarily. Next to her on the aisle was a woman with ear buds.
Reacher said, “I was thinking about the Moynahan cousins. Or brothers, or whatever they were.”
Chang said, “And?”
“There were two of them, and they were a hundred times less trouble than Hackett on his own.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I got hit three times. Which is my point. As opposed to zero times before. I agree with you about Hackett in California and the gun guys in Illinois and the boss in Arizona. It’s a national organization. But I don’t see how Mother’s Rest can be a part of it. Those folks are a far lower standard. They can’t be a local division. They would be the weak link in the chain. They’d stick out like a sore thumb.”
“So what are they?”
“Clients, possibly,” Reacher said. “McCann hired Keever. Maybe Mother’s Rest hired someone too. Maybe that’s what happens now. Maybe bad guys outsource their muscle to national organizations. Maybe they outsource everything. Why not? It’s a service economy.”
Chang said, “Then the sister could be in danger. Theoretically. Because organizations behave like organizations. They ask for a detailed brief. Did Mother’s Rest know McCann talked to his sister? If so, she’s in the brief. She’s a loose end. Because we are, too. We could meet. And organizations don’t like loose ends to meet. Cover-your-ass is way too important.”
Reacher said nothing.
Chang said, “What?”
“I wanted to say I’m sure the sister is OK. She has to be, logically. I mean, Keever was there just a couple of days, and now we’re asking if someone knows his client’s sister’s address? The odds against would be enormous, surely. Big numbers.”
“But?”
“Being on a plane is a helpless feeling. Things can prey on your mind.”
The Phoenix airport was properly titled Sky Harbor International, and it was a safe harbor, at least airside. Because of the metal detectors. Landside was a different ball game. So Reacher and Chang got off the plane and walked away from the exit, toward more distant gates. Where they stopped in at a coffee shop and sat on high stools and waited. For the last Chicago passenger to be in a hotel bus. For anyone waiting out there for Chicago passengers to have long ago given up and gone home.
Then they strolled out, window shopping, infinitely slow, watching for belated recognition, for phoned-ahead alerts, but seeing nothing. The airport was spacious, and crowds were thin, and folks were relaxed. After Chicago it felt like Sunday. They stopped short of the airside exit and looked at shoes and sweatshirts and turquoise jewelry, until the next plane landed, and a crowd of disembarking passengers bore down, maybe a hundred people, from Minnesota, Reacher thought, with a hundred carry-on bags, and he and Chang slipped in ahead of the last stragglers, and they hustled through the baggage hall in a loose mobile crowd, through the last of the air-conditioned chill, and out to the taxi line, into the baking desert heat. But the wait there was not more than a breathless minute. No one paid attention. No one shuffled, and no one looked at them, and no one looked away.
They took the cab to the car rental compound. No one followed. Reacher had no driver’s license, so Chang lined up and rented a mid-sized Chevrolet. It was bland and white, for anonymity, and it had GPS, for getting around. They waited at the document booth and scanned ahead. No idling cars at the curb. No one else around. It was too hot for pedestrians.
They drove random and incoherent directions for ten minutes, and then they set the GPS for the tony suburb. Where the doctor lived, with McCann’s sister. They found news radio, but there was nothing from Chicago. No time for it. Apparently Phoenix had problems of its own. The GPS took them north, and then east toward Scottsdale, then into a suburban street that led to another, and finally to the right development.
Which had a gatehouse at its entrance.
The gatehouse was built in a decorative style, with a hipped roof and cactus plantings, and a red-striped barrier coming out on the right, and a red-striped barrier coming out on the left. Like a fat bird with two skinny wings.
A gated community. Rich people. Taxpayers. Political donors. The Maricopa County sheriffs on speed dial.
They waited at the curb, a hundred yards short.
It was three in the afternoon. Five, in Chicago.
There was one guard behind the glass.
Reacher said, “We should have figured.”
Chang said, “If she’s heard about her brother, we’ll never get in. Not if that guy has to call the house first. Which I’m sure he does.”
Reacher said, “You have an FBI card.”
“It’s not a badge. He’ll know the difference.”
&nb
sp; “He’s a rent-a-cop.”
“He’s a human being with a pulse. That’s all it takes.”
“Mrs. Hopkins was impressed by it.”
“Different generation. Different instincts about the government.”
Reacher said nothing.
Chang said, “You OK?”
“My head hurts.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Let’s try to get in.”
“OK, but any problems, we withdraw gracefully. We live to fight another day. The sister is a bridge we can’t afford to burn.”
She drove on and turned in, and stopped ahead of the barrier, right next to the sliding glass partition. She buzzed her window down. She flipped her hair and turned her head and smiled. She said, “We’re here for Dr. and Mrs. Evan Lair.”
The rent-a-cop was an elderly white man, in a gray polyester uniform. A short-sleeved shirt. Thin, mottled arms.
He hit a red button.
He said, “I hope you folks have a wonderful afternoon.”
The barrier went up.
Chang drove on through. She buzzed her window up again and said, “I wouldn’t want to pay money for security like that.”
Reacher said, “The landscaping is nice, though.”
And it was. There were no lawns. There was nothing that needed water. There were artful rivers of stone, with cactus leaves slashing through like blades, and mists of pale red flowers, and steel sculptures, still bright and uncorroded in the bone-dry air. The land was flat, and the lots were large, and the houses were set at different angles, this way and that, as if they had arrived on the scene by accident.
Reacher said, “It should be up ahead on the left. A quarter-mile, maybe.”
Which was where a lot of cars were gathered. All different makes, all different models, all different colors. Most of them expensive. They were cheek by jowl on the driveway, three across, three deep, then spilling out bumper to bumper to the street outside, all clustered, all packed in tight, all randomly misaligned, with empty curbs ahead of them, and empty curbs beyond them, as if the house at that location was uniquely and strongly magnetic.
Maybe thirty cars in total.
Which was why the barrier had gone up with no questions asked.
There was a message at the gate.
A house party.
Or a cocktail party, or a pool party, or whatever other kind of a party could bring thirty cars over at three o’clock on a hot afternoon.
The mailbox at the end of the crowded driveway said The Lairs’ Lair.
Chang parked beyond the last of the curbside cars. They got out in the heat and looked back. The house itself was handsome, wide and confident, one story, a complex roof, part adobe, part rough-hewn hunting lodge, showy enough to at least whisper wealth and taste, but by most standards not really showy at all. Whatever was happening at the house was happening in the back yard. Which was not on view. There was a head-high wall running all around. An architectural feature, made to look the same as the house. Same siding, same color. Same everywhere in the association. The front yards were all open, but the back yards were all buttoned up tight. Private. Nothing to see. But Reacher felt he could hear a pool. He could hear splashing, and muted watery yelps. The kind of sounds people make in pools. Breathlessness, and the shock of cool water. Which would make sense. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. It was more than a hundred degrees. Why else would people come over? The pool, the patio, maybe the kitchen and the family room, in and out of sliding doors. Cans of beer in tubs of ice.
Chang said, “We did some research in the Bureau. I wrote some of it myself, actually. I’m like Mrs. Hopkins. The research was into cars. We worked out a ratio, for any given venue, between the value of the cars parked outside and the amount of money changing hands inside.”
Reacher said, “You think there’s money changing hands in there?”
“No, I’m telling you based on my hard-won expertise valuing cars that there are some very wealthy folk in attendance here. And quite a mixture. Those are not just girl cars. There are some couple-cars here. Even some boy cars, straight from work. This is a heavyweight crowd.”
They walked closer.
There was a gate in the back yard wall, near the garage. Wide enough for a ride-on mower. Specified years before, presumably, by an architect who thought people would always want lawns. Now used as a regular in-out walkway. A landscaped path. Rivers of stones. Knee-high solar lights. The gate standing open a foot. Glimpses of people beyond, packed together, gauzy, sunlit, moving a little.
A woman coming out of the gate.
Carrying a bag to her car, briskly, busily, officially.
Not McCann’s sister. A friend or a neighbor. A co-host or a co-organizer.
Walking fast.
Coming close.
Stopping, and smiling.
Saying, “Hello, welcome, so good of you to come, please go in.”
Moving onward to her car.
Chapter 38
Reacher and Chang used the decorative path, past the plantings, between the solar lights, through the gate, and into the back yard. They saw a broad rectangle of spectacular desert landscaping, with wood arbors and climbing vines for shade, and huge terracotta pots and fallen amphorae spilling out with flowers, and stately saguaro cactuses standing alone in gravel beds. They saw a swimming pool made of dark plaster, shaped like a natural pond, edged with rocks, and fed by small splashing waterfalls. They saw teak furniture, richly oiled, with fat colorful cushions, and sun umbrellas, and outdoor dining tables.
They saw about forty people, men and women, some young, mostly older, some dressed in bright Arizona clothes, some in bathing suits, some in cover-ups, all clustered in groups, talking, laughing, clutching plates and glasses. Some were wet, and there were others still in the water, ducked down neck-deep and talking, or floating, or horsing around. At a table under a vine was a young woman of about thirty, long and lithe and golden tan, in a thin shirt over a bikini, relaxed and smiling, but luminous, and in some unstated but obvious way the center of attention. Behind her on one side was a man, gray-haired but well preserved, wearing khaki shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt, and behind her on the other side was a dark-haired woman with bright eyes and a wide smile, wearing an ankle-length shift made of pale linen. The familiar ease between the three of them made it clear this was a daughter and her parents, and the old Google image seen on Chang’s phone made it clear the parents were Dr. and Mrs. Evan Lair.
Reacher pointed discreetly and said, “Check that out.”
There was a long table set up near the house, and it was stacked with gifts, most of them large and boxy, all of them wrapped and ribboned in monochrome whites and silvers.
Chang said, “This is a wedding.”
“Looks like it,” Reacher said. “Their daughter’s, presumably. The girl at the table. I guess she’s McCann’s niece.”
Then McCann’s sister was on the move, after a last laugh and smile and affectionate squeeze of her daughter’s shoulder. She drifted from group to group, chatting, sparkling, leaning in, smiling, kissing, having the time of her life.
Chang said, “She hasn’t heard from Chicago yet. How could she have?”
Reacher said nothing.
McCann’s sister moved on, group to group, taking a glass from a passing tray, putting her hand on other people’s arms, putting the glass back on another tray. Then she caught sight of Reacher and Chang standing alone and awkward near the gate, underdressed in terms of quality, overdressed in terms of quantity, unknown and unexplained, and she changed course and headed toward them, still smiling, eyes still bright, a happy hostess’s welcome all over her face.
Chang whispered, “We can’t tell her. Not now.”
The woman came close and extended a slim and manicured hand. She said, “Have we met? I’m Lydia Lair.”
She looked like her Google picture at the charity ball. Like a million dollars. Chang shook her hand and gave her name, and then
Reacher did, and the woman said, “I’ll ask you the same question I’ve been asking all afternoon, which is, do you know our daughter from school or from work? Not that it makes the slightest bit of difference, of course. It’s all one big party. But it’s something to say.”
Reacher said, “Ma’am, we’re here for something else entirely. Perhaps we should come back later. We wouldn’t want to crash a wedding. Might bring seven years of bad luck.”
The woman smiled.
“I think that’s mirrors,” she said. “And this isn’t the wedding. Far from it. Not yet. This is a kind of pre-pre-pre-wedding breakfast bride’s-side-only party sort of thing. So people can start to get to know each other ahead of the rest of the week’s events, so everyone gets energized for the big deal at the weekend. My daughter says everyone does it now. But you know how it is these days. The weddings last longer than the marriages.”
And then she laughed, a happy sound, as if certain her joke didn’t apply to her, as if certain her daughter’s marriage would last forever.
Chang asked, “Would this evening be more convenient?”
“May I know what it’s about?”
“Your brother Peter.”
“Oh dear, I’m so sorry, but I think you might have wasted a trip. He isn’t here. He didn’t come. We expected him, obviously, but it’s a long flight. How do you know Peter?”
“We should get into that later this evening. If that’s convenient. Because right now we’re holding you up. And we’ve taken far too much of your time already. We should let you get back to your guests.”
McCann’s sister smiled appreciatively, and started to turn away. But a new thought struck her, and she turned back, different. She said, “Is Peter in trouble? Are you police officers?”
Chang did the only thing she could, as a woman with a code, which was to ignore both questions completely, and respond with a statement that resembled an answer. She said, “We’re private investigators.”