by Lee Child
“That’s my business.”
“Something to hide?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Blake smiled. “So, three years. What have you been doing?”
Reacher shrugged again. “Nothing much. Having fun, I guess.”
“Working?”
“Not often.”
“Just bumming around, right?”
“I guess.”
“Doing what for money?”
“Savings.”
“They ran out three months ago. We checked with your bank.”
“Well, that happens with savings, doesn’t it?”
“So now you’re living off of Ms. Jacob, right? Your girlfriend, who’s also your lawyer. How do you feel about that?”
Reacher glanced through the glare at the worn wedding band crushing Blake’s fat pink finger.
“No worse than your wife does, living off of you, I expect,” he said.
Blake grunted and paused. “So you came out of the Army, and since then you’ve done nothing much, right?”
“Right.”
“Mostly on your own.”
“Mostly.”
“Happy with that?”
“Happy enough.”
“Because you’re a loner.”
“Bullshit, he’s working for somebody,” Cozo said.
“The man says he’s a loner, damn it,” Blake snarled.
Deerfield’s head was turning left and right between them, like a spectator at a tennis game. The reflected light was flashing in the lenses of his glasses. He held up his hands for silence and fixed Reacher with a quiet gaze.
“Tell me about Amy Callan and Caroline Cooke,” he said.
“What’s to tell?” Reacher asked.
“You knew them, right?”
“Sure, way back. In the Army.”
“So tell me about them.”
“Callan was small and dark, Cooke was tall and blond. Callan was a sergeant, Cooke was a lieutenant. Callan was a clerk in Ordnance, Cooke was in War Plans.”
“Where was this?”
“Callan was at Fort Withe near Chicago, Cooke was at NATO headquarters in Belgium.”
“Did you have sex with either of them?” Lamarr asked.
Reacher turned to stare at her. “What kind of a question is that?”
“A straightforward one.”
“Well, no, I didn’t.”
“They were both pretty, right?”
Reacher nodded. “Prettier than you, that’s for damn sure.”
Lamarr looked away and went quiet. Blake turned dark red and stepped into the silence. “Did they know each other?”
“I doubt it. There’s a million people in the Army, and they were serving four thousand miles apart at different times.”
“And there was no sexual relationship between you and either of them?”
“No, there wasn’t.”
“Did you attempt one? With either of them?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why not? Afraid they’d rebuff you?”
Reacher shook his head. “I was with somebody else on both occasions, if you really want to know, and one at a time is usually enough for me.”
“Would you like to have had sex with them?”
Reacher smiled, briefly. “I can think of worse things.”
“Would they have said yes to you?”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“What’s your best guess?”
“Were you ever in the Army?”
Blake shook his head.
“Then you don’t know how it is,” Reacher said. “Most people in the Army would have sex with anything that moves.”
“So you don’t think they’d have rebuffed you?”
Reacher kept his gaze tight on Blake’s eyes. “No, I don’t think it would have been a serious worry.”
There was a long pause.
“Do you approve of women in the military?” Deerfield asked.
Reacher’s eyes moved across to him. “What?”
“Answer the question, Reacher. You approve of women in the military?”
“What’s not to approve?”
“You think they make good fighters?”
"Stupid question,” Reacher said. “You already know they do.”
“I do?”
“You were in ’Nam, right?”
“I was?”
“Sure you were,” Reacher said. “Homicide detective in Arizona in 1976? Made it to the Bureau shortly afterward? Not too many draft dodgers could have managed that, not there, not back then. So you did your tour, maybe 1970, 1971. Eyesight like that, you weren’t a pilot. Those eyeglasses probably put you right in the infantry. In which case you spent a year getting your ass kicked all over the jungle, and a good third of the people kicking it were women. Good snipers, right? Very committed, the way I heard it.”
Deerfield nodded slowly. “So you like women fighters? ”
Reacher shrugged. “You need fighters, women can do it the same as anybody else. Russian front, World War Two? Women did pretty well there. You ever been to Israel? Women in the front line there too, and I wouldn’t want to put too many U.S. units up against the Israeli defenses, at least not if it was going to be critical who won.”
“So, you got no problems at all?”
“Personally, no.”
“You got problems otherwise than personally?”
“There are military problems, I guess,” Reacher said. “Evidence from Israel shows an infantryman is ten times more likely to stop his advance and help a wounded buddy if the buddy is a woman rather than a man. Slows the advance right down. It needs training out of them.”
“You don’t think people should help each other?” Lamarr asked.
“Sure,” Reacher said. “But not if there’s an objective to capture first.”
“So if you and I were advancing together, you’d just leave me if I got wounded?”
Reacher smiled. “In your case, without a second thought.”
“How did you meet Amy Callan?” Deerfield asked.
“I’m sure you already know,” Reacher said.
“Tell me anyway. For the record.”
“Are we on the record?”
“Sure we are.”
“Without reading me my rights?”
“The record will show you had your rights, any old time I say you had them.”
Reacher was silent.
“Tell me about Amy Callan,” Deerfield said again.
“She came to me with a problem she was having in her unit,” Reacher said.
“What problem?”
“Sexual harassment.”
“Were you sympathetic?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Why?”
“Because I was never abused because of my gender. I didn’t see why she should have to be.”
“So what did you do?”
“I arrested the officer she was accusing.”
“And what did you do then?”
“Nothing. I was a policeman, not a prosecutor. It was out of my hands.”
“And what happened?”
“The officer won his case. Amy Callan left the service. ”
“But the officer’s career was ruined anyway.”
Reacher nodded. “Yes, it was.”
“How did you feel about that?”
Reacher shrugged. “Confused, I guess. As far as I knew, he was an OK guy. But in the end I believed Callan, not him. My opinion was he was guilty. So I guess I was happy he was gone. But it shouldn’t work that way, ideally. A not-guilty verdict shouldn’t ruin a career.”
“So you felt sorry for him?”
“No, I felt sorry for Callan. And I felt sorry for the Army. The whole thing was a mess. Two careers were ruined, where either way only one should have been.”
“What about Caroline Cooke?”
“Cooke was different.”
“Different how?”
“Different time, different pla
ce. It was overseas. She was having sex with some colonel. Had been for a year. It looked consensual to me. She only called it harassment later, when she didn’t get promoted.”
“How is that different?”
“Because it was unconnected. The guy was screwing her because she was happy to let him, and he didn’t promote her because she wasn’t good enough at her job. The two things weren’t connected.”
“Maybe she saw the year in bed as an implied bargain. ”
“Then it was a contractual issue. Like a hooker who gets bilked. That’s not harassment.”
“So you did nothing?”
Reacher shook his head. “No, I arrested the colonel, because by then there were rules. Sex between people of different rank was effectively outlawed.”
“And?”
“And he was dishonorably discharged and his wife dumped him and he killed himself. And Cooke quit anyway.”
“And what happened to you?”
“I transferred out of NATO HQ.”
“Why? Upset?”
“No, I was needed someplace else.”
“You were needed? Why you?”
“Because I was a good investigator. I was wasted in Belgium. Nothing much happens in Belgium.”
“You see much sexual harassment after that?”
“Sure. It became a very big thing.”
“Lots of good men getting their careers ruined?” Lamarr asked.
Reacher turned to face her. “Some. It became a witch-hunt. Most of the cases were genuine, in my opinion, but some innocent people were caught up. Plenty of normal relationships were suddenly exposed. The rules had suddenly changed on them. Some of the innocent victims were men. But some were women, too.”
“A mess, right?” Blake said. “All started by pesky little women like Callan and Cooke?”
Reacher said nothing. Cozo was drumming his fingers on the mahogany.
“I want to get back to the business with Petrosian,” he said.
Reacher swiveled his gaze the other way. “There is no business with Petrosian. I never heard of anybody called Petrosian.”
Deerfield yawned and looked at his watch. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
“It’s past midnight, you know that?” he said.
“Did you treat Callan and Cooke with courtesy?” Blake asked.
Reacher squinted through the glare at Cozo and then turned back to Blake. The hot yellow light from the ceiling was bouncing off the red tint of the mahogany and making his bloated face crimson.
“Yes, I treated them with courtesy.”
“Did you see them again after you turned their cases over to the prosecutor?”
“Once or twice, I guess, in passing.”
“Did they trust you?”
Reacher shrugged. “I guess so. It was my job to make them trust me. I had to get all kinds of intimate details from them.”
“You had to do that kind of thing with many women?”
“There were hundreds of cases. I handled a couple dozen, I guess, before they set up special units to deal with them all.”
“So give me a name of another woman whose case you handled.”
Reacher shrugged again and scanned back through a succession of offices in hot climates, cold climates, big desks, small desks, sun outside the window, cloud outside, hurt and outraged women stammering out the details of their betrayal.
“Rita Scimeca,” he said. “She would be a random example.”
Blake paused and Lamarr reached down to the floor and came up with a thick file from her briefcase. She slid it sideways. Blake opened it and turned pages. Traced down a long list with a thick finger and nodded.
“OK,” he said. “What happened with Ms. Scimeca?”
“She was Lieutenant Scimeca,” Reacher said. “Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The guys called it hazing, she called it gang rape.”
“And what was the outcome?”
“She won her case. Three men spent time in military prison and were dishonorably discharged.”
“And what happened to Lieutenant Scimeca?”
Reacher shrugged again. “At first she was happy enough. She felt vindicated. Then she felt the Army had been ruined for her. So she mustered out.”
“Where is she now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Suppose you saw her again someplace? Suppose you were in some town somewhere and you saw her in a store or a restaurant? What would she do?”
“I have no idea. She’d probably say hello, I guess. Maybe we’d talk awhile, have a drink or something.”
“She’d be pleased to see you?”
“Pleased enough, I guess.”
“Because she would remember you as a nice guy?”
Reacher nodded. “It’s a hell of an ordeal. Not just the event itself, but the process afterward, too. So the investigator has to build up a bond. The investigator has to be a friend and a supporter.”
“So the victim becomes your friend?”
“If you do it right, yes.”
“What would happen if you knocked on Lieutenant Scimeca’s door?”
“I don’t know where she lives.”
“Suppose you did. Would she let you in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would she recognize you?”
“Probably.”
“And she’d remember you as a friend?”
“I guess.”
“So you knock on her door, she’d let you in, right? She’d open up the door and see this old friend of hers, so she’d let you right in, offer you coffee or something. Talk a while, catch up on old times.”
“Maybe,” Reacher said. “Probably.”
Blake nodded and stopped talking. Lamarr put her hand on his arm and he bent to listen as she whispered in his ear. He nodded again and turned to Deerfield and whispered in turn. Deerfield glanced at Cozo. The three agents from Quantico sat back as he did so, just an imperceptible movement, but with enough body language in it to say OK, we’re interested. Cozo stared back at Deerfield in alarm. Deerfield leaned forward, staring straight through his glasses at Reacher.
“This is a very confusing situation,” he said.
Reacher said nothing back. Just sat and waited.
“Exactly what happened at the restaurant?” Deerfield asked.
“Nothing happened,” Reacher said.
Deerfield shook his head. “You were under surveillance. My people have been following you for a week. Special Agents Poulton and Lamarr joined them tonight. They saw the whole thing.”
Reacher stared at him. “You’ve been following me for a week?”
Deerfield nodded. “Eight days, actually.”
“Why?”
“We’ll get to that later.”
Lamarr stirred and reached down again to her briefcase. She pulled out another file. Opened it and took out a sheaf of papers. There were four or five sheets clipped together. They were covered in dense type. She smiled icily at Reacher and reversed the sheets and slid them across the table to him. The air caught them and riffed them apart. The clip dragged on the wood and stopped them exactly in front of him. In them Reacher was referred to as the subject. They were a list of everything he had done and everywhere he had been in the previous eight days. They were complete to the last second. And they were accurate to the last detail. Reacher glanced from them to Lamarr’s smiling face and nodded.
“Well, FBI tails are obviously pretty good,” he said. “I never noticed.”
There was silence.
“So what happened in the restaurant?” Deerfield asked again.
Reacher paused. Honesty is the best policy, he thought. He scoped it out. Swallowed. Then he nodded toward Blake and Lamarr and Poulton. “These law school buffs would call it imperfect necessity, I guess. I committed a small crime to stop a bigger one happening. ”
“You were acting alone?” Cozo asked.
Reacher nodded. “Yes, I was.”
&nbs
p; “So what was don’t start a turf war with us all about?”
“I wanted it to look convincing. I wanted Petrosian to take it seriously, whoever the hell he is. Like he was dealing with another organization.”
Deerfield leaned all the way over the table and retrieved Lamarr’s surveillance log. He reversed it and riffed through it.
“This shows no contact with anybody at all except Ms. Jodie Jacob. She’s not running protection rackets. What about the phone log?”
“You’re tapping my phone?” Reacher asked.
Deerfield nodded. “We’ve been through your garbage, too.”
“Phone log is clear,” Poulton said. “He spoke to nobody except Ms. Jacob. He lives a quiet life.”
“That right, Reacher?” Deerfield asked. “You live a quiet life?”
“Usually,” Reacher said.
“So you were acting alone,” Deerfield said. “Just a concerned citizen. No contact with gangsters, no instructions by phone.”
He turned to Cozo, a question in his eyes. “You comfortable with that, James?”
Cozo shrugged and nodded. “I’ll have to be, I guess.”
“Concerned citizen, right, Reacher?” Deerfield said.
Reacher nodded. Said nothing.
“Can you prove that to us?” Deerfield asked.
Reacher shrugged. “I could have taken their guns. If I was connected, I would have. But I didn’t.”
“No, you left them in the Dumpster.”
“I disabled them first.”
“With grit in the mechanisms. Why did you do that?”
“So nobody could find them and use them.”
Deerfield nodded. “A concerned citizen. You saw an injustice, you wanted to set it straight.”
Reacher nodded back. “I guess.”
“Somebody’s got to do it, right?”
“I guess,” Reacher said again.
“You don’t like injustice, right?”
“I guess not.”
“And you can tell the difference between right and wrong.”
“I hope so.”
“You don’t need the intervention of the proper authorities, because you can make your own decisions.”
“Usually.”
“Confident with your own moral code.”
“I guess.”
There was silence. Deerfield looked through the glare.
“So why did you steal their money?” he asked.
Reacher shrugged. “Spoils of battle, I guess. Like a trophy.”
Deerfield nodded. “Part of the code, right?”