Jack In A Box

by Diane Capri

  Gaspar stretched like a cat, asked, “Shall we walk?” and set off eastbound before she had a chance to respond.

  Kim ran through the options. The Metro Stop at 7th Street was off the path, a cab wasn’t worth the wait, she absolutely wasn’t taking the bus, Gaspar wasn’t limping, and walking always helped to organize her thoughts before a mission.

  “Probably easiest, if you’re up for it,” Kim said, quickening her pace to reach him and keep up with his longer stride.

  So they approached the National Gallery of Art’s East Building the first time as any tourist might travel from FBI headquarters, hoofing less than a mile along Pennsylvania Avenue and turned right at 4th Street NW, walking along the sidewalk opposite the East Building.

  Kim had studied the building through quick online research during her return flight from Madison. Opened in 1978, it was designed by I.M. Pei, which no doubt accounted for its irregular shape and probably explained the National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1981.

  Inside, the building housed modern art, research centers and offices. Outside, it was nestled among the trees, surrounded by a six-acre contemporary sculpture garden and green space on three sides.

  Although it was connected underground to the more traditional West Building where the main Gallery entrance was located, the East Building also admitted the public through a massive glass-walled entrance facing 4th Street.

  Before they turned onto 4th Street, they’d seen a line of cabs and limousines at the East Building’s front entrance. Kim looked inside the East Building lobby as they walked past. The room seemed stuffed to capacity. Men in tuxedoes; women in long gowns and short skirts; waiters passing trays of canapés and bubbly; a string quartet playing in the front corner. None of the noise from the party seeped out to Kim’s ears.

  “Some sort of charity gala?” she asked, noticing the flags on a few of the limos. “Diplomats, maybe?”

  At the 4th Street and Madison Drive corner, they crossed 4th Street, turned and returned along the sidewalk closest to the East Building this time. The green space was lighted, but too dark to traverse without dogs and Tasers. They stayed on the sidewalk until they reached the opposite corner, which was technically 4th Street and Constitution.

  Gaspar’s gaze scanned everywhere. He said, “Three dark hoodies at three o’clock, south side, between the glass pyramids. Check it out next pass.”

  “Reacher?”

  He wagged his head. “Too small.”

  “You saw the sculptures and all those narrow, open areas around the building?” she asked. What worried her were the number of deeply shadowed areas suitable for clandestine attacks. Quick death was easy to imagine and bodies could lay in those shadows for a good long time before anyone noticed.

  Gaspar seemed to hear her concern. “Even if he planned this -”

  “You think he didn’t?”

  He wagged his head. “Not Reacher’s style, is it? Based on what we know? He’d come right at us if he wanted to take us out.”

  Kim’s breath sucked in and stayed there a beat, making it hard to talk. “Why don’t I find that reassuring?” she said lightly when she could speak again.

  Gaspar laughed. “If he planned everything. Big if. But if he did, this is a test.”

  “Test of what?”

  Gaspar shrugged. “Dunno. He wants to see what we’ll do. Whether we’ll come alone or bring an army. How long we’ll wait. What we’ll say. My kids call it a psych-out.”

  Kim said nothing, but she agreed, partly. If she'd expected to find Reacher here tonight in the shadows, she would have brought more firepower. But she thought Reacher had planned this encounter. What exactly was he up to?

  7.

  On their second pass in front of the building, the limos had begun to collect their diplomats and depart. They’d pulled up in front, one at a time, orderly, their drivers knowing the drill. The glass doors opened, spilling music and party chatter into the quiet.

  Kim saw the three hooded people standing between two of the glass pyramids Gaspar had spied. They wore dark jeans, dark athletic shoes, stood with their hands in their pockets, fidgeting, but otherwise seemed to lack menace. Impossible to discern whether they were men or women. Aside from the weather being too warm for hoodies, Kim saw nothing alarming about them. Yet.

  By the third pass most of the guests and all of the limos had departed. The string quartet was breaking down their equipment inside. Cabs pulled up one at a time waiting for fares. The noise level had diminished.

  Kim checked her Seiko. It was ten minutes past their scheduled meet. What were they looking for? Waiting for? She had no clue, and on this point she judged Gaspar clueless as well.

  Was Reacher here? Watching? Kim had looked for him but had seen nothing resembling a giant paying attention to her.

  On the fourth pass, Kim noticed a woman standing apart from the building in the shadow of the largest pyramid, facing the line of cabs at the front entrance, facing her and Gaspar, facing the three hoodies, although they were blocked from her view by the large glass pyramid that separated them.

  8.

  The woman wore an ankle-length black cape and silver party shoes with a three-inch spike heel poked below the hemline. The cape’s full hood covered her head and obscured her face. She was slightly built, medium height. Kim could discern nothing else about the woman’s shape concealed by her cape.

  Kim felt her gun resting securely within easy reach before she touched Gaspar’s arm. He nodded. They moved together into the shadows toward the woman. Despite the hour’s walking, his limp remained under control.

  The woman said, “No closer. I can hear you from there.”

  They stopped. Kim calculated how quickly she could close the distance. Slightly faster than their adversary, since she was encumbered by those spike heels.

  “What do you want?” the woman asked.

  “You know that already,” Kim answered and then asked her own question. “Who are you?”

  The woman smiled briefly, as if the response was expected according to some tit-for-tat plan. “Susan Duffy, DEA, Houston office. Why are you hunting Reacher?”

  “We want information about him.” Kim hesitated a couple of beats to see if the woman would fill the silence. She didn’t. “Why do you care?”

  Susan Duffy broke the rules; she didn’t answer the question. “What kind of information?”

  “Everything, including his underwear size and what kind of condoms he uses. Whatever we need to get him in the box,” Gaspar said.

  Susan Duffy, if that’s who she was, laughed.

  Kim was vaguely aware that the departing gala guests had diminished from a few hundred to a few dozen to a few couples, making the trek from the entrance to the waiting cabs only a pair at a time.

  Gaspar asked, “What do you know about Reacher?”

  Duffy had tired of the game, perhaps. She simply stated the message she’d come to deliver. “You’re wasting your time looking in official files. You'll find plenty before March 1997, but it's all bullshit Reacher prepared himself. You won't find anything involving Reacher after that.”

  “Why not?”

  Duffy’s expression was unreadable. “Reacher has friends in high and low places.”

  “Friends who made his crimes disappear, you mean?”

  Duffy’s tone hardened. “Friends like me. Friends who notice you making a pest of yourself in our files and repeatedly finding nothing. You don't want that to happen again. Not everyone is as understanding as I am.”

  Gaspar asked, “How do you know every file has been scrubbed clean of every Jack Reacher reference?”

  Duffy slid the big hood back revealing short blonde hair, small ears close to her head, and huge emerald earrings. She put a bit of friendly into her voice. “Keep looking if you have nothing better to do. Your file on Jack Reacher will remain thin. Your mission will fail. You’ll never put Reacher in any kind of box. And you’ll piss people off. But hey, if y
ou want to throw your careers in the toilet, you’ll get no problem from me.”

  Kim watched one of the last pair of partiers walking toward the curb while she allowed this information to soak in. Both the man and the woman were older, a bit unsteady on their feet. Tipsy maybe.

  She didn't know how she felt about Duffy’s attitude. Challenged? Should she try to prove Duffy wrong? Or relieved? Because she could now focus elsewhere?

  She asked, “Do you know where Reacher is?”

  After a moment, Duffy shook her head, “You won't find him if he doesn't want to be found.”

  Gaspar’s impatience flared. “We’ll find him. We found Osama Bin Laden and he was a hell of a lot more powerful than Jack Reacher.”

  Duffy smiled again, “Yeah, we found Bin Laden. After ten years of looking. Yeah, we got him. After Seal Team Six made it happen.” She paused for the briefest of moments. “But we didn't take him alive. If you’ve got ten years and a Seal team, maybe you can manage to kill Reacher, but you won’t take him alive unless he wants you to.” She shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  Kim took a deep breath. “So what do you suggest?”

  “You could give up.”

  Gaspar chuckled. “You don't know Otto.”

  The energy in the air seemed to shift, as if Duffy had done what she’d come to do. She nodded slightly before lifting the hood to cover her shimmering blonde hair and returning her hands to her pockets. Her slight form almost merged with the darkness and became a single shadow.

  “Suit yourself,” her disembodied voice seemed to echo too loudly. She softened her tone. “But know this: you risk everything if you keep looking. Everything. And Reacher risks nothing while he waits. That doesn't sound like a winning equation to me. Does it to you?”

  9.

  Before Kim could answer she heard a loud thump behind her. She turned to see the three hoodies emerge from the pyramids moving swiftly. They approached the older couple leaving the gala.

  The hoodies’ moves seemed choreographed, as if they’d practiced or maybe done this many times before. One shoved into the distinguished tuxedoed man knocking him off balance; he shouted “Hey!” before he regained his unsteady footing.

  At the same time, the second hoodie stopped, raised his arm, and pointed a Glock squarely at the older woman’s chest. The woman looked green, as if she might vomit, and began to shake.

  The third hoodie shoved the tuxedoed man backward and shouted, “You got something to say?”

  The man tripped and fell on his left side. A loud crack followed by the man’s animal-like screaming confirmed broken bones, at least.

  Otto pulled her weapon and aimed it at the first hoodie’s center mass, and shouted, “FBI!”

  Simultaneously, Gaspar pivoted on his good left leg, rushed the gunman, and knocked him to the ground, sending his Glock skimming the sidewalk into the shadows toward Duffy. The gunman’s temple slammed onto the concrete and bounced twice, leaving him splayed and motionless, his neck bent at an unnatural angle.

  The older woman’s horrified face lasted three seconds before she staggered, fainted, and fell face down onto the sidewalk, breaking her nose. Blood pooled and seeped into view from the center of her face.

  The second hoodie froze in place, arms up, hands palm out in recognizable surrender. Security reinforcements approached running, guns drawn.

  For the next moments, Otto held the two muggers at gunpoint while Gaspar attended to the woman.

  Kim glanced briefly toward Duffy. For the first time, she saw a man standing alone in the sculpture’s shadow. He looked familiar, but it was too dark to be sure. He was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket and work boots. Both hands were stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. He wore no hat. Duffy, completely engulfed in the long, black cape, passed close to him. He dipped his head to catch words that Kim was too far away to hear, or to be heard if she’d shouted to them.

  Duffy never stopped walking. She disappeared into the darkness of the sculpture garden. The big man looked straight toward Kim long enough to cause a fission of recognition to run up her spine before he, too, disappeared.

  10.

  Security guards arrived on the scene, called for back up, secured all three hoodies, and assumed control. Minutes later, flashing lights from first responder vehicles lined up along 4th Street like a holiday parade.

  Once the muggers were in custody, the tuxedoed man and older woman placed in an ambulance bound for the nearest hospital, Gaspar slipped into the shadows searching for Susan Duffy. But he found only damp November air, as Kim had known he would.

  Gaspar returned, dipped his head to ask quietly, making the effort to return them to normalcy. “Now what, Boss Dragon Lady?”

  “Like Duffy suggested, Zorro, we’ll start where Reacher left off.”

  till staring at the empty space where Duffy had been, Gaspar asked, “Which would be where, Susie Wong?”

  Agent Otto turned toward Pennsylvania Avenue, smiled and replied, “We’re building a file, Chico, not reading one. Think about it. Only one choice. U.S. Army buddies before March 1997.”

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Thank you for reading my books. You're the reason I write! If you liked my book, you can help keep my work going by "liking" it on Amazon and everywhere the option is offered, and by posting your honest reviews of the book to help other readers decide whether it's worth their reading time. I hope you will.

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  If you want to read the stories Behind the Book you can find them on my website. http://DianeCapri.com

  Readers know my books are heavily researched, edited, proofed and professionally formatted. If you find errors, please let us know and we'll fix them if we can, and send you a free short story for your time. http://dianecapri.com/contact/

  While you're there, send me your questions. http://dianecapri.com/contact/ I love to hear from you!

  That said, the criminal activities herein depicted are pure fiction, as are the characters. Any events or real places mentioned are used fictitiously. As we all know, truth is stranger than fiction.

  Thanks again for reading!

  About the Author

  Diane Capri is a lawyer and multi-published author.

  She’s a snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers and is hard at work on her next novel.

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