by Diane Capri
Just two days ago.
“And?”
“Compared it to the first video we acquired.” Last week, they’d seen and studied a better quality video in Margrave, Georgia. A man they’d thought was Reacher impersonated a U.S. Marshall to break an inmate out of the local jail.
“And?” Gaspar asked again.
She shook her head slowly. “Definitely not Reacher on the Margrave video.”
“Because?”
She shared each comparison point slowly, even though she felt confident in her conclusions. The knowledge might save both their lives. “Reacher’s taller, broader, looser limbed. His posture’s better and his hands are bigger. Gestures more contained and defined. No wasted motions.”
The server brought Gaspar’s pie, a piece big enough to feed Kim for a week. Then she refilled their coffee mugs and left them alone.
Gaspar dug into the pie like a man who hadn’t eaten in decades. His appetite amused and amazed Kim every time she witnessed it. If she ate in one month the amount of calories he consumed in one meal, she’d be as big as one of her mother’s Buddha statues.
As it always did, her mind returned to Reacher. He was starting to feel very familiar to her, even though she had uncovered only a limited number of data points. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
In a moment of unanticipated confrontation, such familiarity might save her life, or cost it. Impossible to tell in advance.
But when there’s only one choice, it’s the right choice.
The only thing she could do was keep working on the puzzle, one interlocking piece after another, until she could see the entire picture. When would that happen?
“Any flashes of brilliance over there, Sunshine?” Gaspar asked, talking around his mouthful of pie and ice cream, as if she’d solved their knotty problems when he knew damn well they’d acquired precisely nothing of use this entire, miserable day.
She smirked. “Absolutely. I figure Reacher will be joining us for dinner three days from now at 7:32 p.m. at the Capital Grille in Chicago.”
Gaspar’s right eyebrow shot up in a perfect demonstration of his quizzical nature. As if she’d been dead serious, he swallowed and replied, “I’ve got fifty bucks that says you’re right.”
She laughed out loud, which, strangely enough, made her feel a bit more normal. Finally.
“Is Dixon with Reacher?” Kim asked.
“Too many variables to hypothesize at this point, don’t you think?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Like what?”
“Probably two and maybe three of Reacher’s special unit left, and we can’t find even one of them. It’s not normal.”
“There is nothing normal about this entire assignment. We established that a long while back, Sunshine.”
“This is beyond abnormal.”
“How so?”
“Nine soldiers survive long stints and tough jobs in the Army. They get out and survive a long while. Later, in no special order, one disappears off the planet and five are dead, none by natural causes.”
“As far as we know,” Gaspar reminded.
“Right.”
“Like I said, it’s beyond abnormal. Weird, in fact. Outside of Mafia crime families and gang wars, I can’t think of any reason why that many members of a single group of any kind would find themselves in this situation. Can you?”
He seemed to consider her question and finally said, “No.”
“Right,” she said again. “If we have any prayer of learning anything useful about Reacher from his Army buddies, our last clear chance is Frances Neagley in Chicago.”
“And we need to get to her before she ends up dead or missing, too.”
“So you agree that Reacher’s on his way and has a three-day head start, then?”
Gaspar shrugged. “Who knows if he’s with Dixon or Neagley, neither or both?”
Too many mysteries, unanswered questions, unbelievable situations. All of them revolved around Reacher. That was the only part lacking surprise.
The server came back with the coffee pot, the check, and unwelcome if not surprising news. “You folks aren’t flying anywhere tonight, are you? Just heard they’ve closed the airports until tomorrow morning. A big jet slid off the runway and they’ve got a mess with cleaning that up in addition to the sleet storm.”
Kim didn’t even bother complaining. Sometimes, it just wasn’t worth the effort.
She pulled out her phone and pressed the redial on the number for the Grand Hyatt Hotel to confirm the tentative reservations she’d already made. Before she could make the connection, her screen reflected a new message from H. Silver, with attachments.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Thursday, November 11
8:55 p.m.
New York City
While Gaspar completed the paperwork for check-in at the hotel, Kim found a small shop at Grand Central geared to travelers, where she bought two phone chargers, deodorant, and a T-shirt to sleep in. They’d rely upon the hotel to supply the remaining necessities. While Gaspar rebooked their flight back to DC for the morning and sent his clothes to the laundry service, Kim had also stopped at the business center to print the three photos Silver had forwarded before joining Gaspar in his room.
Kim handed one phone charger and the three printed photos to Gaspar. He studied them while she rooted around the room until she found an empty outlet behind the television.
Gaspar studied the messenger’s photo. “Friendly-looking fellow,” he said.
After a few pretzel-like contortions, she connected the second charger to her smartphone, which had depleted its final gasp of reserve battery power downstairs when she downloaded Silver’s photos.
The room’s Asian decor suited her size better than his. Courtesy of her German-American father, Kim was all lithe, lanky, and stubborn blonde, but only on the inside. Outside, she was shy of five feet tall and just as shy of 100 pounds, courtesy of her Vietnamese mother. The combination was seldom ideal. This hotel room furniture was a rare exception. She couldn’t be blamed for savoring it, could she?
She plopped down in the room’s only chair. Gaspar had stretched out on the grey leather divan, which barely accommodated his length. Wearing the hotel’s skimpy robe, he looked uncomfortably cramped. She noticed him wince every time his weight shifted to his right side.
“Great cover, isn’t it?” he said, holding the photo of the messenger up to her. She’d examined it on the way upstairs. It was a surprisingly clear full-face headshot, almost as if the messenger had posed for it. She’d already committed his face to memory. Brown hair. Dark eyes. Freckles. Big smile. Friendly-looking, indeed.
Gaspar spent more time with the second and third photos. These, too, were clear for surveillance cameras, though the two subjects were obscured. They’d either been lucky, which was unlikely. Or they’d expertly avoided clean headshots, which meant this couple was worth investigating.
“One of these shots was taken in the lobby and the other in the elevator,” Gaspar said. “Not even an ear is exposed.”
Kim mentally reviewed both photos. The man and woman stood close together. She was looking down, wearing a scarf covering her head, and sunglasses. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and an overcoat with its collar up. His face was turned away from the cameras, which had captured only the back and side of his head under the hat.
“Notice the time stamps,” she said.
“The messenger’s first visit was quite a while back. It’s stamped October 3, 9:16 a.m. For the couple, less than forty-eight hours after O’Donnell was killed. Monday, November 8, 14:32 p.m. and 14:36 p.m. Guess these two didn’t spend much time with Silver in the lobby, did they?”
Kim had noticed that, too. “Why do you think that is?”
Gaspar glanced up. “They must have done what we did. Given him ID he felt comfortable with. Wonder what that was?”
“And if the messenger is somehow involved with this couple or with Dixon’s disappe
arance, he’s been running his game for weeks. That suggests a certain level of sinister we hadn’t expected,” she said, thinking out loud.
“But he could be just a messenger,” Gaspar suggested. “Dixon’s stop could be on his route. Maybe he ran from you today because of something unrelated to Dixon.”
She’d rejected this possibility hours ago, on the sidewalk when she’d seen the alarm in his eyes at the moment he noticed she’d recognized him. “Because I’m so big and scary, you mean?”
He grinned. “Well, you’ve got a scary gun and you were chasing the guy, after all.”
She’d have punched him if he wasn’t all the way across the room. Instead, she slouched as if he couldn’t rile her with foolishness.
Gaspar asked, “Is this all Silver sent? No photos of the pair going in and out of Dixon’s apartment? No elevator or lobby departure shots? No timeline or anything?”
“Dunno. My battery ran out of juice before I could check. But Silver included the names and contact information they gave him. Video, too. We’ll be able to download it shortly when my phone is working again. I don’t want to rearrange the furniture to look at it while it’s charging, do you?”
He said, “Maybe the video will at least show us something about their body sizes. No rush. Let’s rethink this a bit while we wait. The glue holding everything together is Reacher’s old army unit. What do we know about them?”
Kim agreed they’d had very little opportunity to compare notes and analyze what they’d learned so far. “Not as much as we need to know.”
“Right.”
She gave up her pout and straightened up in the chair as she recounted the early facts. “Stanley Lowery was the first one to die. Alleged car accident victim, quite a while ago. His obituary said he was one of those back-to-the-earth types. Moved to Big Sky Country to raise sheep. There was a valid Montana death certificate.”
“He got hit by a truck,” Gaspar reminded her. “And nothing to suggest Reacher was around at the time or had any motive, let alone caused Lowery’s death. Let that one go.”
She wasn’t willing to accept the easy answer, but for now she simply nodded. “Okay, chronologically, who died next?”
Gaspar said, “Couple of years later, Tony Swan, Manuel Orozco, and Calvin Franz all confirmed dead under fairly suspicious circumstances within a few days of each other. Maybe in that order, but it’s hard to know based on the information we’ve got.”
He waited a moment, as if they had not digested and disagreed over this data before. Kim waited until Gaspar filled the silence. “I suppose it’s prudent to list those three as potential Reacher victims, but the idea doesn’t sit right with me.”
Kim felt the same way, but she wanted to hear Gaspar’s take on it. Gaspar was the closest thing to Reacher’s mindset she could get for now. On paper, Gaspar and Reacher’s resumes were similar until they both left the Army. And they shared that Y chromosome thing. She had three brothers and had worked around men all her life, but male-think often confounded her. She’d be a fool not to exploit Gaspar’s thinking. “Because?”
He wagged his head back and forth slowly as if it might help him to work out the kinks in his thinking. “Reacher was an Army officer. West Point graduate, no less. Not only that, a military cop. Hunting down U.S. Army-trained killers and bringing them back for court martial is a tough, tough gig. I know. I’ve done it. And Reacher chose his own team. Each of these soldiers must have saved Reacher’s ass dozens of times. And vice-versa.”
Gaspar leaned forward and studied her face as if he could persuade her to his point of view if she would only pay attention. “After all that, I’m sorry, Sunshine, but unless we can prove he’s certifiably nuts, I just don’t see the guy betraying members of his handpicked special investigations unit at all. Ever. No matter what.”
“It’s not the Marines. No Semper Fi and ‘once a Marine, always a Marine’ and all of that,” Kim reminded him quietly.
He seemed to consider her comment seriously, but soon rejected it. “These nine had formed a special unit. They not only worked together, they relied upon each other for everything. That sort of bond—I don’t know if it can be severed.”
Gaspar had offered no new facts, nothing Kim didn’t already know, nothing she hadn’t already rejected. “All things are possible, Chico. Maybe the question we should be looking at is how that bond could have been severed. Because something out of the ordinary definitely happened.”
He shook his head hard, even more firmly entrenched now. “Reacher might be hunting and taking out their killers. That makes a certain kind of sense. But you want to assume that Reacher killed members of his own unit?” He stood to pace the room in his slow, limping way that suggested pain Kim couldn’t fathom.
Gaspar continued pacing and as always, the stretching seemed to lessen his pain and give him more control over his right leg. Kim had determined to let him tell her about his disability in his own way and his own time. But they’d been together ten days now and he hadn’t once acknowledged the weak leg at all. How much longer should she wait? She didn’t know, but she felt now was not the time. Something else was bothering him, too. So she waited. For now.
He grabbed a bottle of water and settled again onto the inadequate divan. Finally, he said, “About the only wild ass guess I can come up with is maybe—maybe, mind you—unavoidable self-defense might make Reacher kill his team. I’m not persuaded, though. I don’t see how that could happen even once, let alone repeatedly and separated by years of time and miles of distance.”
“I agree,” she said.
“Why the hell let me struggle with that, then?” His face suffused red and his nostrils flared and real anger bubbled over, which confirmed her gut. Gaspar was struggling with something. This was the first time she’d seen him so volatile. But she felt certain it wasn’t her theories on Reacher that caused his reaction. What had pushed his buttons?
She waited until he managed to control himself once more, then said, as if he’d never lost his Latin temper, “Because I love watching your mind work. Or not work.”
Ignoring his glare, she went on. “The theory’s an obvious non-starter because it skips right over the most relevant issue in your setup. Basic criminal law. You know it as well as I do. Killing isn’t self-defense unless the opponent presents an immediate threat of deadly harm. Meaning Reacher couldn’t kill his team in self-defense unless they attacked him first.”
She paused to give her point a fighting chance to breach the steam fairly billowing out of his ears and land in his brain. “Despite your unflagging belief in my creative abilities,” she said, grinning at him, “I can’t figure anything their former leader might have done to incite a cold, lethal mutiny in Reacher’s team. Can you?”
Gaspar leaned his head forward and rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand. He squeezed his eyes shut as if forcing them closed might somehow reinvigorate him.
Kim had been studying Gaspar in the way she wanted to study Reacher. All of Gaspar’s data points were melding together like molten chocolate she could smell and almost taste. He was slowly becoming predictable, which she found comforting. Predictable meant reliable in Kim Otto’s world.
She wondered what he really thought about Reacher’s old unit. Were they as loyal to Reacher as Gaspar seemed to expect? Maybe they were. Maybe that’s why they were dead. Maybe Reacher didn’t kill them literally, but maybe something they learned from him or about him had proved fatal.
Gaspar said, “Let’s move on. There were eight plus Reacher originally. We’ve accounted for half of them. What about the remaining four?”
“Well, Jorge Sanchez disappeared around the same time Swan, Franz and Orozco died,” Kim replied.
Gaspar raised his eyebrow again. “Could be your answer right there.”
Kim wagged her head. “Not likely. It’s possible Sanchez could have killed the first four. Once Reacher found out about it, he could have made it his business to avenge his team. If we assume
that happened, then Sanchez would have been a walking dead man for a very short while until Reacher caught up with him and made it a permanent condition.”
“What’s wrong with that? I like that idea. Makes sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Kim stood up. Stretched. Gaspar was tired. She was tired. They weren’t going anywhere tonight because of the storm and the analysis wasn’t going anywhere, either, as far as she could tell. Maybe it was time to give it up. But then again, what else did they have to do? “If Reacher killed Sanchez five years ago, who killed O’Donnell last week?”
Gaspar opened his eyes. “Reacher again, most likely. Maybe he finally figured out that Sanchez and O’Donnell worked together to kill the others.”
“Wow, Chico. Tangled web you’re weaving just so you can give Reacher the benefit of the doubt.”
He shrugged. “Killing any one of those three dropped from the helicopter was definitely more than a one-person job.”
She nodded to concede that point. “Which means Reacher would only have needed the right accomplice to help him. Sanchez, say, who Reacher then takes out after he’s through with him. And then maybe O’Donnell looks into it and gets too close, so Reacher takes him out, too. We could look into O’Donnell’s notes, look for signs of him sniffing around the other killings.”
“Who’s got the tangled web now?” Gaspar said. After a second or two of brow-knitting, he shrugged. “Mostly, I just don’t like to think about criminal behavior by military personnel at all, and certainly not distinguished officers like Reacher. Or military cops like his team.”
She felt the same. Kim was a cop, too. And a damn good one. She worked side-by-side with some of the bravest veterans anywhere in the world. She didn’t like chasing these angles, either. But it would fit the facts and she knew she’d be a fool to ignore them. She’d learned the hard way to take the facts as they came.
Kim moved on. “Whatever happened to Franz, Snow, and Orozco, only three and at most four members of the unit remain alive. Reacher, Sanchez, who is almost certainly dead, Karla Dixon, who is probably dead.” Kim took a quick breath before concluding: “And Francis Neagley.”