by Lee Child
The way she said it was like a question, an apology, a reassurance all in one word. I looked back at her.
“You bet your ass,” I said, and winked.
She nodded. Winked back. We were OK. We went out the front door and left it slightly open, just like we’d found it.
I HID THE BENTLEY IN HER GARAGE TO MAINTAIN THE ILLUSION that we hadn’t been back to her house. Then we got in her Chevy and decided to start with breakfast up at Eno’s. She took off and gunned the car up the hill. It felt loose and low after the upright old Bentley. Coming down the hill toward us was a panel van. Smart dark green, very clean, brand-new. It looked like a utility van, but on the side was a sign in fancy gold script. It said: Kliner Foundation. Same as I’d seen the gardeners using.
“What’s that truck?” I said to Roscoe.
She wafted through the right at the convenience store. Up onto Main Street.
“Foundation’s got a lot of trucks,” she said.
“What is it they do?” I asked her.
“Big deal around here,” she said. “Old man Kliner. The town sold him the land for his warehouses and part of the deal was he set up a community program. Teale runs it out of the mayor’s office.”
“Teale runs it?” I said. “Teale’s the enemy.”
“He runs it because he’s the mayor,” she said. “Not because he’s Teale. The program assigns a lot of money, spends it on public things, roads, gardens, the library, local business grants. Gives the police department a hell of a lot. Gives me a mortgage subsidy, just because I’m with the department.”
“Gives Teale a lot of power,” I said. “And what’s the story with the Kliner boy? He tried to warn me off you. Made out he had a prior claim.”
She shuddered.
“He’s a jerk,” she said. “I avoid him when I can. You should do the same.”
She drove on, looking edgy. Kept glancing around, startled. Like she felt under threat. Like someone was going to jump out in front of the car and gun us down. Her quiet life in the Georgia countryside was over. Four men in the night up at her house had shattered that.
We pulled into Eno’s gravel lot and the big Chevy rocked gently on its soft springs. I slid out of the low seat and we crunched across the gravel together to Eno’s door. It was a gray day. The night rain had chilled the air and left rags of cloud all over the sky. The siding on the diner reflected the dullness. It was cold. It felt like a new season.
We went in. The place was empty. We took a booth and the woman with glasses brought us coffee. We ordered eggs and bacon with all kinds of extras on the side. A black pickup was pulling into the lot outside. Same black pickup as I’d seen three times before. Different driver. Not the Kliner kid. This was an older guy. Maybe approaching sixty, but bone-hard and lean. Iron-gray hair shaved close to his scalp. He was dressed like a rancher in denim. Looked like he lived outdoors in the sun. Even through Eno’s window I could sense his power and feel the glare in his eyes. Roscoe nudged me and nodded at the guy.
“That’s Kliner,” she said. “The old man himself.”
He pushed in through the door and stood for a moment. Looked left, looked right, and moved in to the lunch counter. Eno came around from the kitchen. The two of them talked quietly. Heads bent together. Then Kliner stood up again. Turned to the door. Stopped and looked left, looked right. Rested his gaze on Roscoe for a second. His face was lean and flat and hard. His mouth was a line carved into it. Then he moved his eyes onto me. I felt like I was being illuminated by a searchlight. His lips parted in a curious smile. He had amazing teeth. Long canines, canted inward, and flat square incisors. Yellow, like an old wolf. His lips closed again and he snapped his gaze away. Pulled the door and crunched over the gravel to his truck. Took off with the roar of a big motor and a spray of small stones.
I watched him go and turned to Roscoe.
“So tell me more about these Kliner people,” I said.
She still looked edgy.
“Why?” she said. “We’re fighting for our lives here and you want to talk about the Kliners?”
“I’m looking for information,” I said. “Kliner’s name crops up everywhere. He looks like an interesting guy. His son is a piece of work. And I saw his wife. She looked unhappy. I’m wondering if all that’s got anything to do with anything.”
She shrugged and shook her head.
“I don’t see how,” she said. “They’re newcomers, only been here five years. The family made a fortune in cotton processing, generations back, over in Mississippi. Invented some kind of a new chemical thing, some kind of a new formula. Chlorine or sodium something, I don’t know for sure. Made a huge fortune, but they ran into trouble with the EPA over there, you know, about five years ago, pollution or something. There were fish dying all the way down to New Orleans because of dumping into the river.”
“So what happened?” I asked her.
“Kliner moved the whole plant,” she said. “The company was his by then. He shut down the whole Mississippi operation and set it up again in Venezuela or somewhere. Then he tried to diversify. He turned up here in Georgia five years ago with this warehouse thing, consumer goods, electronics or something.”
“So they’re not local?” I said.
“Never saw them before five years ago,” she said. “Don’t know much about them. But I never heard anything bad. Kliner’s probably a tough guy, maybe even ruthless, but he’s OK as long as you’re not a fish, I guess.”
“So why is his wife so scared?” I said.
Roscoe made a face.
“She’s not scared,” she said. “She’s sick. Maybe she’s scared because she’s sick. She’s going to die, right? That’s not Kliner’s fault.”
The waitress arrived with the food. We ate in silence. The portions were huge. The fried stuff was great. The eggs were delicious. This guy Eno had a way with eggs. I washed it all down with pints of coffee. I had the waitress running back and forth with the refill jug.
“Pluribus means nothing at all to you?” Roscoe asked. “You guys never knew anything about some Pluribus thing? When you were kids?”
I thought hard and shook my head.
“Is it Latin?” she asked.
“It’s part of the United States’ motto, right?” I said. “E Pluribus Unum. It means out of many, one. One nation built out of many former colonies.”
“So Pluribus means many?” she said. “Did Joe know Latin?”
I shrugged.
“I’ve got no idea,” I said. “Probably. He was a smart guy. He probably knew bits and pieces of Latin. I’m not sure.”
“OK,” she said. “You got no other ideas at all why Joe was down here?”
“Money, maybe,” I said. “That’s all I can think of. Joe worked for the Treasury Department, as far as I know. Hubble worked for a bank. Their only thing in common would be money. Maybe we’ll find out from Washington. If we don’t, we’re going to have to start from the beginning.”
“OK,” she said. “You need anything?”
“I’ll need that arrest report from Florida,” I said.
“For Sherman Stoller?” she said. “That’s two years old.”
“Got to start somewhere,” I said.
“OK, I’ll ask for it,” she shrugged. “I’ll call Florida. Anything else?”
“I need a gun,” I said.
She didn’t reply. I dropped a twenty on the laminate tabletop and we slid out and stood up. Walked out to the unmarked car.
“I need a gun,” I said again. “This is a big deal, right? So I’ll need a weapon. I can’t just go to the store and buy one. No ID, no address.”
“OK,” she said. “I’ll get you one.”
“I’ve got no permit,” I said. “You’ll have to do it on the quiet, OK?”
She nodded.
“That’s OK,” she said. “There’s one nobody else knows about.”
WE KISSED A LONG HARD KISS IN THE STATION HOUSE LOT. Then we got out of the car and went in throug
h the heavy glass door. More or less bumped into Finlay rounding the reception counter on his way out.
“Got to go back to the morgue,” he said. “You guys come with me, OK? We need to talk. Lot to talk about.”
So we went back out into the dull morning. Got back into Roscoe’s Chevy. Same system as before. She drove. I sat across the back. Finlay sat in the front passenger seat, twisted around so he could look at the both of us at once. Roscoe started up and headed south.
“Long call from the Treasury Department,” Finlay said. “Must have been twenty minutes, maybe a half hour. I was nervous about Teale.”
“What did they say?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” he said. “They took a half hour to tell me nothing.”
“Nothing?” I said. “What the hell does that mean?”
“They wouldn’t tell me anything,” he said. “They want a shitload of formal authorization from Teale before they say word one.”
“They confirmed Joe worked there, right?” I said.
“Sure, they went that far,” he said. “He came from Military Intelligence ten years ago. They headhunted him. Recruited him specially.”
“What for?” I asked him.
Finlay just shrugged.
“They wouldn’t tell me,” he said. “He started some new project exactly a year ago, but the whole thing is a total secret. He was some kind of a very big deal up there, Reacher, that’s for sure. You should have heard the way they were all talking about him. Like talking about God.”
I went quiet for a while. I had known nothing about Joe. Nothing at all.
“So that’s it?” I said. “Is that all you got?”
“No,” he said. “I kept pushing until I got a woman called Molly Beth Gordon. You ever heard that name?”
“No,” I said. “Should I have?”
“Sounds like she was very close to Joe,” Finlay said. “Sounds like they may have had a thing going. She was very upset. Floods of tears.”
“So what did she tell you?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” Finlay said. “Not authorized. But she promised to tell you what she can. She said she’ll step out of line for you, because you’re Joe’s little brother.”
I nodded.
“OK,” I said. “That’s better. When do I speak to her?”
“Call her about one thirty,” he said. “Lunch break, when her office will be empty. She’s taking a big risk, but she’ll talk to you. That’s what she said.”
“OK,” I said again. “She say anything else?”
“She let one little thing slip,” Finlay said. “Joe had a big debrief meeting scheduled. For next Monday morning.”
“Monday?” I said. “As in the day after Sunday?”
“Correct,” he said. “Looks like Hubble was right. Something is due to happen on or before Sunday. Whatever the hell he was doing, it looks like Joe knew he would have won or lost by then. But she wouldn’t say anything more. She was out of line talking to me at all and she sounded like she was being overheard. So call her, but don’t pin your hopes on her, Reacher. She may not know anything. Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing up there. Big-time secrecy, right?”
“Bureaucracy,” I said. “Who the hell needs it? OK, we have to assume we’re on our own here. At least for a while. We’re going to need Picard again.”
Finlay nodded.
“He’ll do what he can,” he said. “He called me last night. The Hubbles are secure. Right now, he’s sitting on it, but he’ll stand up for us if we need him.”
“He should start tracing Joe,” I said. “Joe must have used a car. Probably flew down from Washington, into Atlanta, got a hotel room, rented a car, right? We should look for the car. He must have driven it down here Thursday night. It must have been dumped somewhere in the area. It might lead us back to the hotel. Maybe there would be something in Joe’s hotel room. Files, maybe.”
“Picard can’t do that,” Finlay said. “FBI isn’t equipped to go looking for abandoned rental cars. And we can’t do it ourselves, not with Teale around.”
I shrugged.
“We’ll have to,” I said. “No other way. You can sell Teale some story. You can double bluff him. Tell him you figure the escaped con who he says did the Morrison thing must have been in a rental car. Tell him you need to check it out. He can’t say no to that, or else he’s undermining his own cover story, right?”
“OK,” Finlay said. “I’ll try it. Might work, I guess.”
“Joe must have had phone numbers,” I said. “The number you found in his shoe was torn off a computer printout, right? So where’s the rest of the printout? I bet it’s in his hotel room, just sitting there, covered with phone numbers, with Hubble’s number torn off the top. So you find the car, then you twist Picard’s arm to trace the hotel through the rental company, OK?”
“OK,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”
IN YELLOW SPRINGS WE SLIPPED INTO THE HOSPITAL ENTRANCE lane and slowed over the speed bumps. Nosed around to the lot in back. Parked near the morgue door. I didn’t want to go inside. Joe was still in there. I started to think vaguely about funeral arrangements. I’d never had to do it before. The Marine Corps handled my father’s. Joe arranged my mother’s.
But I got out of the car with the two of them and we walked through the chill air to the door. Found our way back to the shabby office. The same doctor was at the desk. Still in a white coat. Still looking tired. He waved us in and we sat down. I took one of the stools. I didn’t want to sit next to the fax machine again. The doctor looked at all of us in turn. We looked back at him.
“What have you got for us?” Finlay said.
The tired man at the desk prepared to answer. Like preparing for a lecture. He picked up three files from his left and dropped them on his blotter. Opened the top one. Pulled out the second one and opened that, too.
“Morrison,” he said. “Mr. and Mrs.”
He glanced around the three of us again. Finlay nodded to him.
“Tortured and killed,” the pathologist said. “The sequence is pretty clear. The woman was restrained. Two men, I’d say, one on each arm, gripping and twisting. Heavy bruising on the forearms and the upper arms, some ligament damage from twisting the arms up her back. Obviously the bruising continued to develop from the time she was first seized until the time she died. The bruising stops developing when the circulation stops, you understand?”
We nodded. We understood.
“I’d put it at about ten minutes,” he said. “Ten minutes, beginning to end. So the woman was being held. The man was being nailed to the wall. I’d guess both were naked by then. They were in nightwear before the attack, right?”
“Robes,” Finlay said. “They were having breakfast.”
“OK, the robes came off early on,” the doctor said. “The man was nailed to the wall, technically to the floor also, through the feet. His genital area was attacked. The scrotum was severed. Postmortem evidence suggests that the woman was persuaded to swallow the amputated testicles.”
The office was silent. Silent as a tomb. Roscoe looked at me. Stared at me for a while. Then she looked back at the doctor.
“I found them in her stomach,” the doctor said.
Roscoe was as white as the guy’s coat. I thought she was going to pitch forward off her stool. She closed her eyes and hung on. She was hearing about what somebody had planned for us last night.
“And?” Finlay said.
“The woman was mutilated,” the doctor said. “Breasts severed, genital area attacked, throat cut. Then the man’s throat was cut. That was the last wound inflicted. You could see the arterial spray from his neck overlaying all the other bloodstains in the room.”
There was dead silence in the room. Lasted quite a while.
“Weapons?” I asked.
The guy at the desk swiveled his tired gaze toward me.
“Something sharp, obviously,” he said. A slight grin. “Straight, maybe five inches long.�
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“A razor?” I said.
“No,” he said. “Certainly something as sharp as a razor, but rigid, not folding, and double-edged.”
“Why?” I said.
“There’s evidence it was used back and forth,” the guy said. He swished his hand back and forth in a tiny arc. “Like this. On the woman’s breasts. Cutting both ways. Like filleting a salmon.”
I nodded. Roscoe and Finlay were silent.
“What about the other guy?” I said. “Stoller?”
The pathologist pushed the two Morrison files to one side and opened up the third. Glanced through it and looked across at me. The third file was thicker than the first two.
“His name was Stoller?” he said. “We’ve got him down as John Doe.”
Roscoe looked up.
“We sent you a fax,” she said. “Yesterday morning. We traced his prints.”
The pathologist rooted around on the messy desk. Found a curled-up fax. Read it and nodded. Crossed out “John Doe” on the folder and wrote in “Sherman Stoller.” Gave us his little grin again.
“I’ve had him since Sunday,” he said. “Been able to do a more thorough job, you know? A bit chewed up by the rats, but not pulped like the first guy, and altogether a lot less mess than the Morrisons.”
“So what can you tell us?” I said.
“We’ve talked about the bullets, right?” he said. “Nothing more to add about the exact cause of death.”
“So what else do you know?” I asked him.
The file was too thick for just the shooting and running and bleeding to death bits. This guy clearly had more to tell us. I saw him put his fingers on the pages and press lightly. Like he was trying to get vibrations or read the file in Braille.
“He was a truck driver,” he said.
“He was?” I said.
“I think so,” the guy said. Sounded confident.
Finlay looked up. He was interested. He loved the process of deduction. It fascinated him. Like when I’d scored with those long shots about Harvard, his divorce, quitting smoking.
“Go on,” he said.
“OK, briefly,” the pathologist said. “I found certain persuasive factors. A sedentary job, because his musculature was slack, his posture poor, flabby buttocks. Slightly rough hands, a fair bit of old diesel fuel ingrained in the skin. Also traces of old diesel fuel on the soles of his shoes. Internally, a poor diet, high in fat, plus a bit too much hydrogen sulfide in the blood gases and the tissues. This guy spent his life on the road, sniffing other people’s catalytic converters. I make him a truck driver, because of the diesel fuel.”