by Dan Ames
Starr remained silent.
“How’s Jack Reacher?” Rodriguez asked. He said it with a heavy dose of snark, and a shit-eating grin on his face.
The others stared at Pauling, gauging her reaction.
So he’s the point man, Pauling thought.
She’d been through this many times and was a little disappointed that they were taking this approach. Pauling had no idea what their goal was, but this type of setting, and this type of questioning, was standard operating procedure for the Bureau. It wasn’t the only way to question a witness but was a time-honored strategy. As a former agent, she was hoping they would take a more professional approach.
“Reacher?” she asked. “I have no idea. Why?”
“How’s business?” Ferguson piped in.
Pauling understood that this was up to Rodriguez and Ferguson. They were going to tag team her while Deerfield observed.
“Business is good,” Pauling said. “But I’m not hiring. Sorry.”
Ferguson kept her face impassive, but Pauling smiled at her.
“Pauling, please let us ask the questions,” Rodriguez interjected. “Now, where were you last week?”
“On a case.”
“Where? Regarding what?”
“That’s confidential information,” Pauling said. “And none of your business.”
No one spoke for a moment.
Finally, Deerfield broke the silence.
“You had a good career with the Bureau, Pauling,” he said. “Up to a point.”
She had known it was going to come up. The case that had brought her in touch with Jack Reacher way back when. The Lane case.
“Thank you,” she replied, letting sarcasm drip into her tone.
“It seemed like Jack Reacher helped you set that whole issue straight,” Rodriguez chimed in, taking back the mantle of being the bad cop. “You two became very close, didn’t you? As in, personally close. Or is that confidential, too?”
Pauling ignored Rodriguez and looked at Deerfield.
“As much fun as this is, do you care to tell me why I’m here?”
Rodriguez soldiered on. “In fact, you fell in love with Reacher but he moved on, like he always does. Always a new town, and a new woman, right? I bet that really pisses you off.”
“You’re the only one who seems bothered by it,” Pauling countered. “Were you also one of Reacher’s conquests or do you just wish you were?”
Rodriguez’s dark skin turned a shade darker.
Pauling turned to Deerfield.
“What’s the problem here?” she asked.
Deerfield’s team waited for his response.
“I think you know,” he said. “Obviously, we knew you were an agent and we wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Benefit of the doubt? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Deerfield nodded to Starr who tapped a few keys on the laptop in front of him, and the large flat screen at the end of the conference room came to life.
It showed three women.
Pauling sensed that Rodriguez was watching her reaction.
She kept her face impassive, which was easy because she didn’t recognize any of the women.
“What about them?” she asked.
“Nice try, Pauling,” Rodriguez answered. “You’re lying and it’s obvious.”
“Why don’t you tell me what I’m lying about?”
Rodriguez stuck a thumb toward the images on the screen.
“You killed them, didn’t you?”
14
Dr. Barnes turned his black Cadillac into the driveway of his home.
It was a large, five-bedroom house inside a gated community and was located in the most private setting of the compound, with no neighbors at the rear. It had been custom-built a decade earlier and featured a Western design, which made sense as the mountain range behind it made for a rugged, adventurous backdrop. The home had plenty of natural flagstone on its exterior, combined with rustic, heavy timbers and a green roof. A large American flag was planted in the front yard and the landscaping consisted of dozens of towering evergreens, accented by shrubs of mountain laurel.
The attached, three-car garage was set at an angle from the main home and done in the same style as the main house. The driveway was a series of interlocking brick pavers that narrowed and continued on as footpaths around the exterior of the house.
Barnes pressed one of the buttons above the Cadillac’s rearview mirror, triggering the door of the garage’s center bay to open. The garage doors were made of the same color wood that had been used to frame the main house.
He drove the car in, and pressed the button again to close the garage door. Once it was fully closed, he got out of the vehicle and pressed the trunk release button on his key fob. It popped open and the doctor raised it all the way and Lamarr shrugged her way out of the body bag. She swung her feet over the ledge of the trunk’s opening, ducked her shoulders, and got out of the trunk.
She raised herself up and adjusted her neck. She tried to stand straight, but it was a pointless endeavor. She hadn’t been able to stand with correct posture since the accident, as she thought of it.
It was always a painful reminder of what had happened before. She’d barely survived and now had to live with the pain.
That was okay.
“Let’s go inside,” she said.
Dr. Barnes led the way to the side door of the garage, which took them to a mudroom and long hallway that in turn opened up into the home’s massive kitchen. It was one of the biggest kitchens Lamarr had ever seen, complete with gourmet appliances, a huge, square island, and multiple refrigerators.
“Put your cell phone, keys and wallet on the counter,” Lamarr told the doctor.
He followed her instructions.
“Now go up to your bedroom and lie down until I tell you to do otherwise.”
Barnes turned and walked to the central staircase that dominated the open space between the kitchen and the great room.
Lamarr waited until the doctor had disappeared at the top of the stairs and then she let out a long, slow breath. She stretched her arms over her head and felt the pain in her neck.
She went to the custom-made wine chiller and withdrew a bottle of white. She uncorked it, poured herself a glass, and wandered into the home’s great room. It was a stunning space, with floor-to-ceiling picture windows that gazed out at the mountain range beyond. Even though this was her first time in the home, she’d had Dr. Barnes describe it in great detail to her, many times over.
Lamarr felt like she’d been here before.
She walked around the rest of the home, confirming that Barnes had described it with accurate details. There was a full guest suite on the first floor, along with a back patio complete with pool and hot tub. To the right of the kitchen was the office, a grand space with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a flat-screen television and the doctor’s home computer. Lamarr had made sure the doctor’s computer was Internet-enabled so she could do the things she had planned.
Eventually, she made her way upstairs and into the doctor’s room.
He was on his back, staring at the ceiling.
Lamarr gazed around the cavernous bedroom. It featured a gargantuan bed, two sitting areas, and a master bathroom with a soaking tub as well as a hot tub. Picture windows looked out over the mountains and there were sliding glass doors that opened up onto a patio. Through the doors, she saw a seating area and a fire pit. At the farthest point on the patio was another hot tub.
She imagined the doctor and his wife, now his ex, sitting in the hot tub on a cold winter night, looking at the mountains.
Lamarr turned and studied the doctor on his back, staring at the ceiling.
They could never have imagined it would come to this.
Lamarr pulled a chair up next to the doctor and began whispering to him.
15
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Pauling said, even though she knew the FBI never kidded
.
Rodriguez spoke in a flat monotone. “You know how law enforcement works. You know what to do and what not to do. You were intimate with Reacher. Probably knew all about his past.” He waved one of his thick hands around. “You could have even used some of your new investigative skills and resources to track down other women he might be shacking up with. Easy.”
“Really, is that all you got?” Pauling asked. “That’s the best you could come up with? Pretty lame. No wonder you’re on the B-team.”
“There’s your age, too,” Ferguson said, her tone icy. “You were never one of Reacher’s ‘pretty young things.’ Maybe you felt like you needed to get rid of the competition.”
Pauling studied Ferguson’s dull features, her rounded shoulders and bargain-priced haircut. She knew she’d wounded the other woman with her previous comment, and Ferguson had taken the time to try to come up with something particularly vicious to knock Pauling off balance.
It hadn’t worked.
“With your looks, or more accurately, your lack of them, I’m not surprised you think like that,” Pauling told her. “You probably have plenty of alone time to fantasize.”
Deerfield held up his hands.
“That’s enough,” he said. “Look.” He turned and faced Pauling directly. “We know that you know something. It’s too big of a coincidence that this has happened while you were out of town. Things will go much easier for you if you tell the truth. Tell us what you know.”
“Nothing,” Pauling said. “Just like you. Because this whole act you’ve put together is clearly one of desperation.”
She glanced around the room. No one was looking at her.
She turned back to face Deerfield. Her tone softened. “I haven’t seen Reacher in a long time, and he was never one to talk about his past, anyway. So I’ve never seen these women before, have no idea who they are. What I know, though, is that by making these accusations, you’ve revealed to me that you don’t have a goddamned clue what you’re talking about.”
Pauling was keeping her anger in check, but it wasn’t easy. She’d seen the same tactics used on plenty of suspects so it wasn’t a surprise. Still, it’s one thing to sit on the other side of the table and be the aggressor, it’s another to be faced with it and not get defensive.
“I’m sure you’ve got an alternate theory,” Rodriguez said. “You would have had plenty of time to pull something together for us. A story. Let’s hear it,” he finished with a smirk.
I don’t think so, Pauling thought. The hell with being defensive. It was time to take the fight to them.
“Sure, let’s start with the first one,” she said.
It seemed to catch them off guard, momentarily. Rodriguez gave an imperceptible nod to Starr, who tapped the keyboard until a woman’s face appeared on the flat-screen television.
Pauling studied the visage. She’d never seen the woman before, but clearly she was a police officer. Pauling had seen hundreds of official law enforcement photos and she could see the blue collar, the white wall behind her.
“A cop,” Pauling said. “You’re saying I started with her? Why?”
“You tell us,” Rodriguez said. “Vaughan may have been the first, maybe not.”
So a cop named Vaughan, with ties to Reacher, was either dead or missing. Pauling felt a sense of satisfaction that she was gathering information.
And then, just like that, she had a flash of insight. Reacher. Law enforcement. He no doubt had met other FBI agents.
“Show me the photo of your colleague who’s gone missing,” Pauling said.
Another shot across the bows, another nod to Starr.
This woman was taller, and had more of a presence than Vaughan. Also, not a cop. A Fed.
“Interesting,” Pauling said. “So different from the first and the last. The last one is Asian, right?”
Starr clicked on the laptop and the Asian woman’s face appeared.
No uniform. Not a cop. Not a Fed.
“We figured this one must have really bothered you,” Rodriguez said. “A fellow private investigator? Maybe Reacher was less interested in you, and more interested in what you do for a living.”
Pauling considered it all in her mind. A cop. A Fed. A PI.
All women.
All connected to Reacher.
She pushed back from the table.
“Well, it’s been great reconnecting with the Bureau, but I’ve got everything I need,” she said.
Pauling got to her feet and saw Deerfield shaking his head.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.
“No?” Pauling asked as she headed for the door.
“No. You’re under arrest,” he said.
16
“That was good, wasn’t it?”
You ask the question, but there is no answer. There have been no answers for quite some time.
“It won’t be long now,” you say.
Silence.
Because you are alone. Technically you aren’t, but emotionally and spiritually, you’re definitely on your own.
But you’ve been in that condition for some time now. Still, it takes some getting used to.
Which is why you still try to communicate, even though there’s nothing next to you but air, space and your thoughts.
Thoughts that have minds of their own.
You noodle that idea around for a while. Thoughts capable of pursuing themselves, of learning and adapting. A form of artificial intelligence, except there’s nothing fake about it.
Not only can they grow and mutate.
They can darken.
Like smoke on a distant horizon. You’re not sure if it’s coming closer or going the other way. Or if it’s a fire raging out of control.
You realize it’s time to stop.
You’ve held off the darkness for some time now and do it by remembering the goal. The end game.
You’re tempted to compare it to chess, but that’s a game. A metaphor for life, true, but still a game.
This stopped being anything trivial a long time ago. That was their choice, not yours. Once you realized what they were doing, you changed everything.
Now, they’re going to be the ones forced to react.
You’ve put on a superlative performance thus far. The strategic choices should lead them in one direction while you go in another. The clues, sparse pieces of evidence scattered here and there should give them just enough rope.
To hang themselves.
17
Pauling sat in a holding room, the kind she was very familiar with. It wasn’t really an interrogation room, and it wasn’t a prison cell.
It was sort of in between.
She had used just such a room many times in her career as an FBI agent. Its sole purpose was to put a suspect, or a witness, on ice. Make them wait. It wasn’t as harsh as letting a suspect stew in a tiny interrogation room under a bright light, but it served a similar purpose.
There was a table with three chairs in the center of the room. Most of the questioning would take place there. One chair for the suspect, the other two for the interrogators. A mirror was on one wall, intended to be interpreted as a two-way mirror, but Pauling had her doubts. It was an old trick for an interviewer to keep glancing at the mirror, to imply the conversation was being filmed, when it really wasn’t.
Then again, it could be the real deal.
You never knew, and that was the point.
Along the other wall was a cheap loveseat, barely room for two people, made of fake leather that had a crack running down the middle of the back.
Industrial carpet and a dropped ceiling helped create the impression of a sad little office. A place where nothing good happened.
Pauling, however, was glad of one thing.
They hadn’t taken her cell phone. And a quick glance at her screen indicated she had decent service, sometimes a rare thing in a government office where access to the outside world is often highly regulated.
She was sure
they would monitor all of her communications, so she quickly made two phone calls. The first was to her personal attorney who promised to be there within the hour.
The second was to Michael Tallon.
When those were completed, she had some time to consider the situation.
Pauling focused on what she’d learned.
Three women associated with Jack Reacher were missing. Not dead. Or were they? She thought back to what they’d said to her.
“You killed them.”
At the same time, they never said the women were dead. In fact, the whole thing felt more like a kidnapping. Why? There were no pictures of the dead bodies. If the FBI team had really wanted to shock her, to knock her off-balance, they would have presented the most gruesome crime scene photographs they had. Preferably ones with lots of blood and gore.
But they hadn’t.
In fact, they’d only shown her photos of the women available online. Probably from a professional source, or the women’s own social media accounts.
Which meant the Feds had no idea if the women were dead or alive. They’d accused Pauling of killing them only to get a rise out of her.
A ruse that obviously hadn’t worked.
So, three women, tied to Reacher. Had they all been involved in the same case? Unlikely. A federal agent, a private investigator and a cop. It was possible they were all working on the same case, but it seemed the greater likelihood was that they were linked only through Reacher. Namely, because that’s what the Feds had accused her of. It was their only angle to Pauling. If they’d all been working on the same case, that’s what Deerfield would have braced her with.
So. Three women. Connected to Reacher. Different cases.
Pauling tried to remember some of the conversations she’d had with Reacher. He’d been a man of relatively few words, especially when it came to his past. He hadn’t talked about women, or previous things he’d encountered on the road.