by Lee Child
She turned alongside him and threaded her arm through his.
“Don’t be,” she said. “He was always a very contented guy. Better for him to go fast. I couldn’t see him being happy lingering on.”
Reacher had a flash in his mind of the old Garber, bustling and raging, a fireball of energy, and he understood how desperate it would have made him to become an invalid. Understood too how that overloaded old heart had finally given up the struggle. He nodded, unhappily.
“Come and meet some people,” Jodie said. “Maybe you know some of them.”
“I’m not dressed for this,” he said. “I feel bad. I should go.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “You think Dad would care?”
He saw Garber in his old creased khaki and his battered hat. He was the worst-dressed officer in the U.S. Army, all thirteen years Reacher had served under him. He smiled, briefly.
“I guess he wouldn’t mind,” he said.
She walked him onto the lawn. There were maybe six people out of the hundred he recognized. A couple of the guys in uniform were familiar. A handful in suits were men he’d worked with here and there in another lifetime. He shook hands with dozens of people and tried to listen to the names, but they went in one ear and out the other. Then the quiet chatter and the eating and the drinking started up again, the crowd closed around him, and the sensation of his untidy arrival was smoothed over and forgotten. Jodie still had hold of his arm. Her hand was cool on his skin.
“I’m looking for somebody,” he said. “That’s why I’m here, really.”
“I know,” she said. “Mrs. Jacob, right?”
He nodded.
“Is she here?” he asked.
“I’m Mrs. Jacob,” she said.
THE TWO GUYS in the black Tahoe backed it out of the line of cars, out from under the power lines so the car phone would work without interference. The driver dialed a number and the ring tone filled the quiet vehicle. Then the call was answered sixty miles south and eighty-eight floors up.
“Problems, boss,” the driver said. “There’s some sort of a wake going on here, a funeral or something. Must be a hundred people milling around. We got no chance of grabbing this Mrs. Jacob. We can’t even tell which one she is. There are dozens of women here, she could be any one of them.”
The speaker relayed a grunt from Hobie. “And?”
“The guy from the bar down in the Keys? He just showed up here in a damn taxi. Got here about ten minutes after we did, strolled right in.”
The speaker crackled. No discernible reply.
“So what do we do?” the driver asked.
“Stick with it,” Hobie’s voice said. “Maybe hide the vehicle and lay up someplace. Wait until everybody leaves. It’s her house, as far as I can tell. Maybe the family home or a weekend place. So everybody else will leave, and she’ll be the one who stays. Don’t you come back here without her, OK?”
“What about the big guy?”
“If he leaves, let him go. If he doesn’t, waste him. But bring me this Jacob woman.”
“YOU’RE MRS. JACOB?“ Reacher asked.
Jodie Garber nodded.
“Am, was,” she said. “I’m divorced, but I keep the name for work.”
“Who was he?”
She shrugged.
“A lawyer, like me. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“How long?”
“Three years, beginning to end. We met at law school, got married when we got jobs. I stayed on Wall Street, but he went to a firm in D.C., couple of years ago. The marriage didn’t go with him, just kind of petered out. The papers came through last fall. I could hardly remember who he was. Just a name, Alan Jacob.”
Reacher stood in the sunny yard and looked at her. He realized he was upset that she had been married. She had been a skinny kid, but totally gorgeous at fifteen, self-confident and innocent and a little shy about it all at the same time. He had watched the battle between her shyness and her curiosity as she sat and worked up the courage to talk to him about death and life and good and evil. Then she would fidget and tuck her bony knees up under her and work the conversation around to love and sex and men and women. Then she would blush and disappear. He would be left alone, icy inside, captivated by her and angry at himself for it. Days later he would see her somewhere around the base, still blushing furiously. And now fifteen years later she was a grown woman, college and law school, married and divorced, beautiful and composed and elegant, standing there in her dead father’s yard with her arm linked through his.
“Are you married?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “No.”
“But are you happy?”
“I’m always happy,” he said. “Always was, always will be.”
“Doing what?”
He shrugged.
“Nothing much,” he said.
He glanced over the top of her head and scanned the faces in the crowd. Subdued busy people, substantial lives, big careers, all of them moving steadily from A to Z. He looked at them and wondered if they were the fools, or if he was. He recalled the expression on Costello’s face.
“I was just in the Keys,” he said. “Digging swimming pools with a shovel.”
Her face didn’t change. She tried to squeeze his forearm with her hand, but her hand was too small and his arm was too big. It came out as a gentle pressure from her palm.
“Costello find you down there?” she asked.
He didn’t find me to invite me to a funeral, he thought.
“We need to talk about Costello,” he said.
“He’s good, isn’t he’?”
Not good enough, he thought. She moved away to circulate through the crowd. People were waiting to offer their second-layer condolences. They were getting loose from the wine, and the buzz of talk was getting louder and more sentimental. Reacher drifted over to a patio, where a long table with a white cloth held food. He loaded a paper plate with cold chicken and rice and took a glass of water. There was an ancient patio furniture set, ignored by the others because it was all spotted with little gray-green botanical droppings from the trees. The sun umbrella was stiff and faded white. Reacher ducked under it and sat quietly in a dirty chair on his own.
He watched the crowd as he ate. People were reluctant to leave. The affection for old Leon Garber was palpable. A guy like that generates affection in others, maybe too much to express to his face, so it has to all come out later. Jodie was moving through the crowd, nodding, clasping hands, smiling sadly. Everybody had a tale to tell her, an anecdote about witnessing Garber’s heart of gold peeping out from under his gruff and irascible exterior. He could add a few stories. But he wouldn’t, because Jodie didn’t need it explained to her that her father had been one of the good guys. She knew. She was moving with the serenity of a person who had loved the old guy all her life, and had been loved back. There was nothing she had neglected to tell him, nothing he had neglected to tell her. People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there’s nothing much to regret.
THEY FOUND A place on the same road that was obviously a weekend cottage, closed up tight and unoccupied. They backed the Tahoe around behind the garage where it was hidden from the street, but ready for pursuit. They took the nine-millimeters out of the glove box and stowed them in their jacket pockets. Walked back down to the road and ducked into the undergrowth.
It was hard going. They were just sixty miles north of Manhattan, but they might as well have been in the jungles of Borneo. There were ragged vines tangled everywhere, grabbing at them, tripping them, whipping their faces and hands. The trees were second-growth native broadleafs, growing wild, basically weeds, and their branches came out of them at crazy low angles. They took to walking backward, forcing their way through. When they got level with the Garber driveway, they were panting and gasping and smeared with moss and green pollen dust. They pushed through onto the property and found a depression in the ground where they were c
oncealed. They ducked left and right to get a view of the pathway leading up from the backyard. People were heading out, getting ready to leave.
It was becoming obvious which one was Mrs. Jacob. If Hobie was right and this was her place, then she was the thin blond shaking hands and saying good-bye like all these departing people had been her guests. They were leaving, she was staying. She was Mrs. Jacob. They watched her, the center of attention, smiling bravely, embracing, waving. People filed up the driveway, ones and twos, then larger groups. Cars were starting. Blue exhaust haze was drifting. They could hear the hiss and groan of power steering as people eased out of the tight line. The rub of tires on pavement. The burble of motors accelerating away down the road. This was going to be easy. Pretty soon she was going to be standing there all by herself, all choked up and sad. Then she was going to get a couple of extra visitors. Maybe she would see them coming and take them for a couple of mourners arriving late. After all, they were dressed in dark suits and ties. What fits in Manhattan’s financial district looks just about right for a funeral.
REACHER FOLLOWED THE last two guests up the cement steps and out of the yard. One was a colonel and the other was a two-star general, both in immaculate dress uniform. It was what he had expected. A place with free food and drink, the soldiers will always be the last to leave. He didn’t know the colonel, but he thought he vaguely recognized the general. He thought the general recognized him, too, but neither of them pursued it. No desire on either part to get into long and complicated so-what-are-you-doing-now explanations.
The brass shook hands quite formally with Jodie and then they snapped to attention and saluted. Crisp parade-ground moves, gleaming boots smashing into the blacktop, eyes rigidly to the front, thousand-yard stares, all quite bizarre in the green stillness of a suburban driveway. They got into the last car left on the garage apron, one of the flat green sedans parked nearest to the house. First to arrive, last to leave. Peacetime, no Cold War, nothing to do all day. It was why Reacher had been happy when they cut him loose, and as he watched the green car turn and head out, he knew he was right to be happy.
Jodie stepped sideways to him and linked her arm through his again.
“So,” she said quietly. “That’s that.”
Then there was just building silence as the noise from the green car faded and died along the road.
“Where’s he buried?” Reacher asked.
“The town cemetery,” she said. “He could have chosen Arlington, of course, but he didn’t want that. You want to go up there?”
He shook his head.
“No, I don’t do stuff like that. Makes no difference to him now, does it? He knew I’ll miss him, because I told him so, a long time ago.”
She nodded. Held his arm.
“We need to talk about Costello,” he said again.
“Why?” she asked. “He gave you the message, right?”
He shook his head.
“No, he found me, but I was wary. I said I wasn’t Jack Reacher.”
She looked up at him, astonished. “But why?”
He shrugged.
“Habit, I guess. I don’t go around looking for involvement. I didn’t recognize the name Jacob, so I just ignored him. I was happy, living quiet down there.”
She was still looking at him.
“I guess I should have used Garber,” she said. “It was Dad’s business anyway, not mine. But I did it through the firm, and I never even thought about it. You’d have listened to him if he’d said Garber, right?”
“Of course,” he said.
“And you needn’t have worried, because it was no kind of a big deal.”
“Can we go inside?” he asked.
She was surprised again. “Why?”
“Because it was some kind of a very big deal.”
THEY SAW HER lead him in through the front door. She pulled the screen and he held it while she turned the knob and opened up. Some kind of a big front door, dull brown wood. They went inside and the door closed behind them. Ten seconds later a dim light came on in a window, way off to the left. Some kind of a sitting room or den, they guessed, so shaded by the runaway plantings outside that it needed lights on even in the middle of the day. They crouched in their damp hollow and waited. Insects were drifting through the sunbeams all around them. They glanced at each other and listened hard. No sound.
They pushed through to the driveway. Ran crouched to the corner of the garage. Pressed up against the siding and slid around to the front. Across the front toward the house. They went into their jackets for the pistols. Held them pointed at the ground and went one at a time for the front porch. They regrouped and eased slowly over the old timbers. Ended up squatting on the floor, backs pressed against the house, one on either side of the front door, pistols out and ready. She’d gone in this way. She’d come back out. Just a matter of time.
“SOMEBODY KILLED HIM?” Jodie repeated.
“And his secretary, probably,” Reacher said.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “Why?”
She had led him through a dark hallway to a small den in the far corner of the house. A tiny window and dark wood paneling and heavy brown leather furniture made it gloomy, so she switched on a desk lamp, which changed it into a cozy man’s space like the pre-war bars Reacher had seen in Europe. There were shelves of books, cheap editions bought by subscription decades ago, and curled faded photographs thumbtacked to the front edges of the shelves. There was a plain desk, the sort of place where an old underemployed man does his bills and taxes in imitation of how he used to work when he had a job.
“I don’t know why,” Reacher said. “I don’t know anything. I don’t even know why you sent him looking for me.”
“Dad wanted you,” she said. “He never really told me why. I was busy, I had a trial, complex thing, lasted months. I was preoccupied. All I know is, after he got sick he was going to the cardiologist, right? He met somebody there and got involved with something. He was worried about it. Seemed to me he felt he was under some kind of a big obligation. Then later when he got worse, he knew he would have to drop it, and he started saying he should find you and let you take a look at it, because you were a person who could maybe do something about it. He was getting all agitated, which was really not a good idea, so I said I’d get Costello to locate you. We use him all the time at the firm, and it felt like the least I should do.”
It made some kind of sense, but Reacher’s first thought was why me? He could see Garber’s problem. In the middle of something, health failing, unwilling to abandon an obligation, needing help. But a guy like Garber could get help anywhere. The Manhattan Yellow Pages were full of investigators. And if it was something too arcane or too personal for a city investigator, then all he had to do was pick up the phone and a dozen of his friends from the military police would come running. Two dozen. A hundred. All of them willing and anxious to repay his many kindnesses and favors that stretched right back through their whole careers. So Reacher was sitting there asking himself why me in particular?
“Who was the person he met at the cardiologist?”
She shrugged, unhappily.
“I don’t know. I was preoccupied. We never really went into it.”
“Did Costello come up here? Discuss it directly with him?”
She nodded. “I called him and told him we’d pay him through the firm, but he was to come here and get the details. He called me back a day or two later, said he’d discussed it with Dad, and it all boiled down to finding you. He wanted me to retain him officially, on paper, because it could get expensive. So naturally I did that, because I didn’t want Dad worrying about the cost or anything.”
“Which is why he told me his client was Mrs. Jacob,” Reacher said. “Not Leon Garber. Which is why I ignored him. Which is how I got him killed.”
She shook her head and looked at him sharply, like he was some kind of a new associate who had just done a piece of sloppy drafting. It took him by surprise.
He was still thinking of her as a fifteen-year-old girl, not a thirty-year-old lawyer who spent her time getting preoccupied with long and complex trials.
“Non sequitur,” she said. “It’s clear what happened, right? Dad told Costello the story, Costello tried some kind of a shortcut before he went looking for you, whereby he turned over the wrong stone and got somebody alerted. That somebody killed him to find out who was looking, and why. Makes no difference if you’d played ball right away. They’d still have gotten to Costello to ask him exactly who put him on the trail. So it’s me who got him killed, ultimately.”
Reacher shook his head. “It was Leon. Through you.”
She shook her head in turn. “It was the person at the cardiology clinic. Him, through Dad, through me.”
“I need to find that person,” he said.
“Does it matter now?”
“I think it does,” he said. “If Leon was worried about something, then I’m worried about it, too. That’s how it worked for us.”
Jodie nodded quietly. Stood up quickly and stepped over to the bookshelves. Pincered her fingernails and levered the thumbtack out of one of the photographs. Looked hard at it and then passed it across to him.
“Remember that?” she asked.
The photograph must have been fifteen years old, the colors fading to pale pastels the way old Kodak does with age and sunlight. It had the harsh bright sky of Manila above a dirt yard. Leon Garber was on the left, about fifty, dressed in creased olive fatigues. Reacher himself was on the right, twenty-four years old, a lieutenant, a foot taller than Garber, smiling with all the blazing vigor of youth. Between the two of them was Jodie, fifteen, in a sundress, one bare arm around her father’s shoulders, the other around Reacher’s waist. She was squinting in the sun, smiling, leaning toward Reacher like she was hugging his waist with all the strength in her skinny brown frame.
“Remember? He’d just bought the Nikon in the PX? With the self-timer? Borrowed a tripod and couldn’t wait to try it out?”