by Lee Child
“I was sorry to hear the news from Spokane,” Reacher said.
Lamarr nodded, silently.
“I offered her time off,” Blake said. “She’s entitled to compassionate leave.”
Reacher looked at him. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”
“In the midst of life is death,” Lamarr said. “That’s something you learn pretty quickly around here.”
“You’re not going to the funeral?”
Lamarr took a teaspoon and balanced it across her forefinger. Stared down at it.
“Alison hasn’t called me,” she said. “I don’t know what the arrangements are going to be.”
“You didn’t call her?”
She shrugged. “I’d feel like I was intruding.”
“I don’t think Alison would agree with that.”
She looked straight at him. “But I just don’t know.”
There was silence. Reacher turned a mug over and poured coffee.
“We need to get to work,” Blake said.
“You didn’t like my theory?” Reacher said.
“It’s a guess, not a theory,” Blake said back. “We can all guess, as much as we want to. But we can’t turn our backs on eighty women just because we enjoy guessing.”
“Would they notice the difference?” Reacher asked.
He took a long sip of coffee and looked at the doughnuts. They were wrinkled and hard. Probably Saturday’s.
“So you’re not going to pay attention?” he asked.
Blake shrugged. “I gave it some consideration.”
“Well, give it some more. Because the next woman to die will be one of the eleven I marked, and it’ll be on your head.”
Blake said nothing and Reacher pushed his chair back.
“I want pancakes,” he said. “I don’t like the look of those doughnuts.”
He stood up before they could object and stepped away toward the center of the room. Stopped at the first table with a New York Times on it. It belonged to a guy on his own. He was reading the sports. The front section was discarded to his left. Reacher picked it up. The story he was waiting for was right there, front page, below the fold.
“Can I borrow this?” he asked.
The guy with the interest in sports nodded without looking. Reacher tucked the paper under his arm and walked to the serving counter. Breakfast was set out like a buffet. He helped himself to a stack of pancakes and eight rashers of bacon. Added syrup until the plate was swimming. He was going to need the nutrition. He had a long journey ahead, and he was probably going to be walking the first part of it.
He came back to the table and squatted awkwardly to get the plate down without spilling the syrup or dropping the newspaper. He propped the paper in front of his plate and started to eat. Then he pretended to notice the headline.
“Well, look at that,” he said, with his mouth full.
The headline read Gang Warfare Explodes in Lower Manhattan, Leaves Six Dead. The story recounted a brief and deadly turf war between two rival protection rackets, one of them allegedly Chinese, the other allegedly Syrian. Automatic firearms and machetes had been used. The body count ran four to two in favor of the Chinese. Among the four dead on the Syrian side was the alleged gang leader, a suspected felon named Almar Petrosian. There were quotes from the NYPD and the FBI, and background reporting about the hundred-year history of protection rackets in New York City, the Chinese tongs, the jockeying between different ethnic groups for their business, which reputedly ran to billions of dollars nationwide.
“Well, look at that,” Reacher said again.
They had already looked at it. That was clear. They were all turned away from him. Blake was staring through the window at the streaks of dawn in the sky. Poulton had his eyes fixed on the back wall. Lamarr was still studying her teaspoon.
“Cozo call you to confirm it?” Reacher asked.
Nobody said a thing, which was the same as a yes. Reacher smiled.
“Life’s a bitch, right?” he said. “You get a hook into me, and suddenly the hook isn’t there anymore. Fate’s a funny thing, isn’t it?”
“Fate,” Blake repeated.
“So let me get this straight,” Reacher said. “Harper wouldn’t play ball with the femme fatale thing, and now old Petrosian is dead, so you got no more cards to play. And you’re not listening to a word I say anyway, so is there a reason why I shouldn’t walk right out of here?”
“Lots of reasons,” Blake said.
There was silence.
“None of them good enough,” Reacher said.
He stood up and stepped away from the table again. Nobody tried to stop him. He walked out of the cafeteria and out through the glass doors into the chill of dawn. Started walking.
HE WALKED ALL the way out to the guardhouse on the perimeter. Ducked under the barrier and dropped his visitor’s pass on the road. Walked on and turned the corner and entered Marine territory. He kept to the middle of the pavement and reached the first clearing after a half-mile. There was a cluster of vehicles and a number of quiet, watchful men. They let him go on. Walking was unusual, but not illegal. He reached the second clearing thirty minutes after leaving the cafeteria. He walked through it and kept on going.
He heard the car behind him five minutes later. He stopped and turned and waited for it. It came near enough for him to see past the dazzle of its running lights. It was Harper, which is what he had expected. She was alone. She drew level with him and buzzed her window down.
“Hello, Reacher,” she said.
He nodded. Said nothing.
“Want a ride?” she asked.
“Out or back?”
“Wherever you decide.”
“I-95 on-ramp will do it. Going north.”
“Hitchhiking?”
He nodded. “I’ve got no money for a plane.”
He slid in next to her and she accelerated gently away, heading out. She was in her second suit and her hair was loose. It spilled all over her shoulders.
“They tell you to bring me back?” he asked.
She shook her head. “They decided you’re useless. Nothing to contribute, is what they said.”
He smiled. “So now I’m supposed to get all boiled up with indignation and storm back in there and prove them wrong?”
She smiled back. “Something like that. They spent ten minutes discussing the best approach. Lamarr decided they should appeal to your ego.”
“That’s what happens when you’re a psychologist who studied landscape gardening in school.”
“I guess so.”
They drove on, through the wooded curves, past the last Marine clearing.
“But she’s right,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to contribute. Nobody’s going to catch this guy. He’s too smart. Too smart for me, that’s for damn sure.”
She smiled again. “A little psychology of your own? Trying to leave with a clear conscience?”
He shook his head. “My conscience is always clear.”
“Is it clear about Petrosian?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Hell of a coincidence, don’t you think? They threaten you with Petrosian, and he’s dead within three days.”
“Just dumb luck.”
“Yeah, luck. You know I didn’t tell them I was outside Trent’s office all day?”
“Why not?”
“I was covering my ass.”
He looked at her. "And what’s Trent’s office got to do with anything?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I don’t like coincidences. ”
“They happen, time to time. Obviously.”
“Nobody in the Bureau likes coincidences.”
“So?”
She shrugged again. “So they could, you know, dig around. Might make it hard for you, later.”
He smiled again. “This is phase two of the approach, right?”
She smiled back, and then the smile exploded into a laugh. “Yeah, phase two. There are
about a dozen still to go. Some of them are real good. You want to hear them all?”
“Not really. I’m not going back. They’re not listening. ”
She nodded and drove on. Paused before the junction with the interstate, and then swooped north up the ramp.
“I’ll take you to the next one,” she said. “Nobody uses this one except Bureau people. And none of them is going to give you a ride.”
He nodded. “Thanks, Harper.”
“Jodie’s home,” she said. “I called Cozo’s office. Apparently they had a little surveillance going. She’s been away. She got back this morning, in a taxi. Looked like she’d come from the airport. Looks like she’s working from home today.”
He smiled. “OK, so now I’m definitely out of here.”
“We need your input, you know.”
“They’re not listening.”
“You need to make them listen,” she said.
“This is phase three?”
“No, this is me. I mean it.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded.
“So why won’t they listen?”
“Pride, maybe?” she said.
“They need somebody’s input,” he said. “That’s for sure. But not mine. I don’t have the resources. And I don’t have the authority.”
“To do what?”
“To take it out of their hands. They’re wasting their time with this profiling shit. It won’t get them anywhere. They need to work the clues.”
“There aren’t any clues.”
“Yes, there are. How smart the guy is. And the paint, and the geography, and how quiet the scenes are. They’re all clues. They should work them. They’ve got to mean something. Starting with the motive is starting at the wrong end.”
“I’ll pass that on.”
She pulled off the highway and stopped at the cross street.
“You going to get into trouble?” he asked.
“For failing to bring you back?” she said. “Probably. ”
He was silent. She smiled.
“That was phase ten,” she said. “I’ll be perfectly OK.”
“I hope so,” he said, and got out of the car. He walked north across the street to the ramp and stood all alone and watched her car slide under the bridge and turn back south.
A MALE HITCHHIKER standing six feet five and weighing two hundred and thirty pounds is on the cusp of acceptability for easy rides. Generally, women won’t stop for him, because they see a threat. Men can be just as nervous. But Reacher was showered and shaved and clean, and dressed quietly. That shortened the odds, and there were enough trucks on the road with big confident owner-drivers that he was back in New York City within seven hours of starting out.
He was quiet most of the seven hours, partly because the trucks were too noisy for conversation, and partly because he wasn’t in the mood for talking. The old hobo demon was whispering to him again. Where are you going? Back to Jodie, of course. OK, smart guy, but what else? What the hell else? Yardwork behind your house? Painting the damn walls? He sat next to a succession of kindly drivers and felt his brief unsatisfactory excursion into freedom ebb away. He worked on forgetting about it, and felt he succeeded. His final ride was from a New Jersey vegetable truck delivering to Greenwich Village. It rumbled in through the Holland Tunnel. He got out and walked the last mile on Canal and Broadway, all the way down to Jodie’s apartment house, concentrating hard on his desire to see her.
He had his own key to her lobby, and he went up in the elevator and knocked on her door. The peephole went dark and light again and the door opened and she was standing there, in jeans and a shirt, tall and slim and vital. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. But she wasn’t smiling at him.
“Hey, Jodie,” he said.
“There’s an FBI agent in my kitchen.” she replied.
“Why?”
“Why?” she repeated. “You tell me.”
He followed her into the apartment, through to the kitchen. The Bureau guy was a short young man with a wide neck. Blue suit, white shirt, striped tie. He was holding a cell phone up to his face, reporting Reacher’s arrival to somebody else.
“What do you want?” Reacher asked him.
“I want you to wait here, sir,” the guy said. “About ten minutes, please.”
“What’s this about?”
“You’ll find out, sir. Ten minutes, is all.”
Reacher felt like walking out, just to be contrary, but Jodie sat down. There was something in her face. Something halfway between concern and annoyance. The New York Times was open on the countertop. Reacher glanced at it.
“OK,” he said. “Ten minutes.”
He sat down, too. They waited in silence. It was nearer fifteen minutes than ten. Then the buzzer from the street sounded and the Bureau guy went to answer it. He clicked the door release and moved out to the hallway. Jodie sat still and passive, like a guest in her own apartment. Reacher heard the whine of the elevator. He heard it stop. He heard the apartment door open. He heard footsteps on the maple floor.
Alan Deerfield walked into the kitchen. He was in a dark raincoat with the collar turned up. He was moving energetically and he had sidewalk grit on the soles of his shoes and it made him loud and invasive.
“I got six people dead in my city,” he said. He saw the Times on the counter and walked over and folded it back to reveal the headline. “So I got a couple questions, naturally.”
Reacher looked at him. “What questions?”
Deerfield looked back. “Delicate questions.”
“So ask them.”
Deerfield nodded. “First question is for Ms. Jacob.”
Jodie stirred in her chair. Didn’t look up.
“What’s the question?” she said.
“Where have you been, the last few days?”
“Out of town,” she said. “On business.”
“Where out of town?”
“London. Client conference.”
“London, England?”
“As opposed to what other Londons?”
Deerfield shrugged. “London, Kentucky? London, Ohio? There’s a London somewhere in Canada too, I believe. Ontario, maybe.”
“London, England,” Jodie said.
“You got clients in London, England?”
Jodie was still looking at the floor. “We’ve got clients everywhere. Especially in London, England.”
Deerfield nodded. “You go by the Concorde?”
She looked up. “Yes I did, as a matter of fact.”
“Real quick, right?”
Jodie nodded. “Quick enough.”
“But expensive.”
“I guess.”
“But worth it for a partner on important business.”
Jodie looked at him. “I’m not a partner.”
Deerfield smiled. “Even better, right? They put an associate on the Concorde, got to mean something. Must mean they like you. Must mean you’ll be a partner real soon. If nothing comes along and gets in the way.”
Jodie said nothing in reply.
“So, London,” Deerfield said. “Reacher knew you were there, right?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t tell him.”
There was a pause.
“Scheduled trip?” Deerfield asked.
Jodie shook her head again. “Last-minute.”
“And Reacher didn’t know?”
“I already told you that.”
“OK,” Deerfield said. “Information is king, is what I say.”
“I don’t have to tell him where I go.”
Deerfield smiled. “I’m not talking about what information you give Reacher. I’m talking about what information I get out of a situation. Right now I’m getting he didn’t know where you were.”
“So?”
“That should have worried him. And it did worry him. Right after he got to Quantico, he was trying to get you on the phone. Office, home, mobile. That night, same thing again. Calling
, calling, calling, couldn’t get you. A worried man.”
Jodie glanced up at Reacher. Concern in her face, maybe a little apology.
“I should have told him, I guess.”
“Hey, that’s up to you. I don’t go around telling people how to conduct their relationships. But the interesting thing is, then he stops calling you. Suddenly he’s not calling you anymore. Now why is that? Did he find out you were safe over there in London, England? ”
She started to reply, and then she stopped.
“I’ll take that for a no,” Deerfield said. “You were worried about Petrosian, so you told people in your office to clam up about where you were. So as far as Reacher knew, you were still right here in town. But he’s suddenly not worried anymore. He doesn’t know you’re safe and sound in London, England, but maybe he does know you’re safe and sound because of some other reason, such as maybe he knows Petrosian isn’t going to be around for very much longer.”
Jodie’s eyes were back on the floor again.
“He’s a smart guy,” Deerfield said. “My guess is he whistled up some pal of his to set the cat among the pigeons up here in Chinatown, and then he sat back and waited for the tongs to do what they always do when somebody starts messing with them. And he figures he’s safe. He knows we’ll never find his busy little pal, and he figures those Chinese boys aren’t going to tell us diddly, not in a million years, and he knows the exact moment old Petrosian is getting the good news with the machete, he’s locked into a room down in Quantico. A smart guy.”
Jodie said nothing.
“But a very confident guy,” Deerfield said. “He stopped calling you two days before Petrosian finally bought the farm.”
There was silence in the kitchen. Deerfield turned to Reacher.
“So am I on the money?” he asked.
Reacher shrugged. “Why should anybody have been worrying about Petrosian?”
Deerfield smiled again. “Oh, sure, we can’t talk about that. We’ll never admit Blake said a word to you on that subject. But like I told Ms. Jacob, information is king. I just want to be a hundred percent sure what I’m dealing with here. If you stirred it up, just tell me and maybe I’ll pat you on the back for a job well done. But if by some chance it was a genuine dispute, we need to know about it.”