by Lee Child
THE CELL BLOCK was underground, like it always is in a regional HQ, below a squat brick building with an iron door, standing alone on the other side of the rose bed. Leighton led them over there through the rain, their collars turned up against the damp and their chins ducked down to their chests. Leighton used an old-fashioned bellpull outside the iron door and it opened after a second to reveal a bright hallway with a huge master sergeant standing in it. The sergeant stepped aside and Leighton led them in.
Inside, the walls were made of brick faced with white porcelain glaze. The floors and the ceilings were smooth troweled concrete painted shiny green. Lights were fluorescent tubes behind thick metal grilles. Doors were iron, with square barred openings at the top. There was a cubbyhole office on the right, with a wooden rack of keys on four-inch metal hoops. There was a big desk, piled high with video recorders taping milky-gray flickering images from twelve small monitor screens. The screens showed twelve cells, eleven of them empty and one of them with a humped shape under a blanket on the bed.
“Quiet night at the Hilton,” Reacher said.
Leighton nodded. “Gets worse Saturday nights. But right now McGuire’s our only guest.”
“The video recording is a problem,” Reacher said.
“Always breaking down, though,” Leighton said.
He bent to examine the pictures on the monitors. Braced his hands on the desk. Bent closer. Rolled his right hand until his knuckle touched a switch. The recorders stopped humming and the REC legends disappeared from the corners of the screens.
“See?” he said. “Very unreliable system.”
“It’ll take a couple hours to fix,” the sergeant said. “At least.”
The sergeant was a giant, shiny skin the color of coffee. His uniform jacket was the size of a field tent. Reacher and Harper would have fitted into it together. Maybe Leighton, too. The guy was the exact ideal-issue MP noncom.
“McGuire’s got a visitor, Sergeant,” Leighton said. An off-the-record voice. “Doesn’t need to go in the log.”
Reacher took off his coat and his jacket. Folded them and left them on the sergeant’s chair. The sergeant took a hoop of keys off the wooden board and moved to the inside door. Unlocked it and swung it back. Reacher stepped through and the sergeant closed the door and locked it again behind him. Pointed to the head of a staircase.
“After you,” he said.
The staircase was built of bricks, rounded at the nose of each stair. The walls either side were the same white glaze. There was a metal handrail, bolted through to the wall every twelve inches. Another locked door at the bottom. Then a corridor, then another locked door. Then a lobby, with three locked doors to three blocks of cells. The sergeant unlocked the middle door. Flipped a switch and fluorescent light stuttered and flooded a bright white area forty feet by twenty. There was an access zone the length of the block and about a third of its depth. The rest of the space was divided into four cells delineated by heavy iron bars. The bars were thickly covered in shiny white enamel paint. The cells were about ten feet wide, maybe twelve deep. Each cell had a video camera opposite, mounted high on the wall. Three of the cells were empty, with their gates folded back. The fourth was locked closed. It held McGuire. He was struggling awake, sitting up, surprised by the light.
“Visitor for you,” the sergeant called.
There were two tall wooden stools in the corner of the access zone nearest the exit door. The sergeant carried the nearer one over and placed it in front of McGuire’s cell. Walked back and sat on the other. Reacher ignored the stool and stood with his hands behind his back, gazing silently through the bars. McGuire was pushing his blanket aside and swinging his feet to the floor. He was wearing an olive undershirt and olive shorts. He was a big guy. More than six feet tall, more than two hundred pounds, more than thirty-five years old. Heavily muscled, a thick neck, big arms, big legs. Thinning hair cropped close, small eyes, a couple of tattoos. Reacher stood absolutely still, watching him, saying nothing.
“Hell are you?” McGuire said. His voice matched his bulk. It was deep, and the words were half swallowed by a heavy chest. Reacher made no reply. It was a technique he had perfected half a lifetime ago. Just stand absolutely still, don’t blink, say nothing. Wait for them to run through the possibilities. Not a buddy. Not a lawyer. Who, then? Wait for them to start worrying.
“Hell are you?” McGuire said again.
Reacher walked away. He stepped over to where the master sergeant was sitting and bent to whisper in his ear. The giant’s eyebrows came up. You sure? Reacher whispered again. The guy nodded and stood up and handed Reacher the hoop of keys. Went out through the door and closed it behind him. Reacher hung the keys on the knob and walked back to McGuire’s cell. McGuire was staring through the bars at him.
“What do you want?” he said.
“I want you to look at me,” Reacher replied.
“What?”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing,” McGuire said.
“You blind?”
“No, I ain’t blind.”
“Then you’re a liar,” Reacher said. “You don’t see nothing.”
“I see some guy,” McGuire said.
“You see some guy bigger than you who had all kinds of special training while you spent your time shuffling paper in some piece-of-shit quartermaster’s stores.”
“So?”
"So nothing. Just something to bear in mind for later, is all.”
“What’s later?”
“You’ll find out,” Reacher said.
“What do you want?”
“I want proof.”
“Of what?”
“Of exactly how dumb a piece of shit like you really is.”
McGuire paused. His eyes narrowed, pushed into deep furrows by his brow.
“Easy for you to talk like that,” he said. “Standing six feet away from these bars.”
Reacher took an exaggerated pace forward.
“Now I’m two feet from the bars,” he said. “And you’re still a dumb piece of shit.”
McGuire took a step forward, too. He was a foot inside the cell, holding a bar in each fist. A level gaze in his eyes. Reacher stepped forward again.
“Now I’m a foot from the bars, same as you,” he said. “And you’re still a dumb piece of shit.”
McGuire’s right hand came off the bar and closed into a fist and his whole arm rammed straight out like a piston. It was headed for Reacher’s throat. Reacher caught the wrist and swayed and whipped the fist past his head and rocked his weight back and hauled McGuire tight up against the inside of the bars. Twisted the wrist palm-out and walked left and bent the arm back against the elbow joint.
“See how dumb you are?” he said. “I keep on walking, I break your arm.”
McGuire was gasping against the pressure. Reacher smiled briefly and dropped the wrist. McGuire stared at him and hauled his arm back inside, rolling the shoulder, testing the damage.
“What do you want?” he said again.
“Want me to open the cell gate?”
“What?”
“Keys are right over there. You want the gate open, even things up a little?”
McGuire’s eyes narrowed a little more. He nodded. “Yeah, open the damn gate.”
Reacher stepped away and lifted the hoop of keys off the knob of the exit door. Shuffled through them and found the right one. He’d handled plenty of cell keys. He could pick one out blindfolded. He stepped back and unlocked the gate. Swung it open. McGuire stood still. Reacher walked away and put the hoop of keys back on the doorknob. Stood facing the door, his back to the cell.
“Sit down,” he called. “I left the stool there for you.”
He sensed McGuire coming out of the cell. Heard his bare feet on the concrete floor. Heard them stop.
“What do you want?” McGuire said again.
Reacher kept his back turned. Straining to sense McGuire’s approach. It wasn’t happening.
/> “It’s complicated,” he said. “You’re going to have to juggle a number of factors.”
“What factors?” McGuire asked, blankly.
“First factor is I’m unofficial, OK?” Reacher said.
“What does that mean?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know,” McGuire said.
Reacher turned around. “It means I’m not an Army cop, I’m not a civilian cop, in fact I’m not anything at all.”
“So?”
“So there’s no comeback on me. No disciplinary procedures, no pension to lose, no nothing.”
“So?”
“So if I leave you walking on crutches and drinking through a straw the rest of your life, there’s nothing anybody can do to me. And we got no witnesses in here.”
“What do you want?”
“Second factor is whatever the big guy says he’ll do to you, I can do worse.”
“What big guy?”
Reacher smiled. McGuire’s hands bunched into fists. Heavy biceps, big shoulders.
“Now it gets sophisticated,” Reacher said. “You need to concentrate real hard on this part. Third factor is, if you give me the guy’s name, he goes away somewhere else, forever. You give me his name, he can’t get to you. Not ever, you understand?”
“What name? What guy?”
“The guy you were paying off with half your take.”
“No such guy.”
Reacher shook his head. “We’re past that stage now, OK? We know there’s such a guy. So don’t make me smack you around before we even get to the important part.”
McGuire tensed up. Breathed hard. Then he quieted down. His body slackened slightly and his eyes narrowed again.
“So concentrate,” Reacher said. “You think that to rat him out puts you in the shit. But you’re wrong. What you need to understand is, you rat him out and actually it makes you safe, the whole rest of your life, because people are looking at him for a bunch of things a whole lot worse than ripping off the Army.”
“What’s he done?” McGuire asked.
Reacher smiled. He wished the video cameras had sound. The guy exists. Leighton would be dancing around the office.
“The FBI thinks he killed four women. You give me his name, they’ll put him away forever. Nobody’s even going to ask him about anything else.”
McGuire was silent. Thinking about it. It wasn’t the speediest process Reacher had ever seen.
“Two more factors,” he said. “You tell me right now, I’ll put in a good word for you. They’ll listen to me, because I used to be one of them. Cops stick together, right? I can get you easy time.”
McGuire said nothing.
“Last factor,” Reacher said gently. “You need to understand, sooner or later you’ll tell me anyway. It’s just a question of timing. Your choice. You can tell me right now, or you can tell me in a half hour, right after I’ve broken your arms and legs and I’m about to snap your spine.”
“He’s a bad guy,” McGuire said.
Reacher nodded. “I’m sure he’s real bad. But you need to prioritize. Whatever he says he’s going to do, that’s theoretical, way off in the future, and like I told you, it isn’t going to happen anyway. But what I’m going to do, it’s going to happen right now. Right here.”
“You ain’t going to do nothing,” McGuire said.
Reacher turned and picked up the wooden stool. Flipped it upside down and held it chest high with his hands around two of the legs. Took a firm backhand grip and bunched his shoulders and pulled steadily. Then he breathed hard and snapped his elbows back and the legs tore away from the rungs. The rungs clattered to the floor. He reversed the stool and held the seat in his left hand and splintered a leg free with his right. Dropped the wreckage and retained the leg. It was about a yard long, the size and weight of a ball bat.
“Now you do the same,” he said.
McGuire tried hard. He turned over his own stool and grasped the legs. His muscles bunched and the tattoos swelled, but he got nowhere with it. He just stood there, holding the stool upside down.
“Too bad,” Reacher said. “I tried to make it fair.”
“He was Special Forces,” McGuire said. “He was in Desert Storm. He’s real tough.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Reacher said. “He resists, the FBI will shoot him down. End of problem.”
McGuire said nothing.
“He won’t know it came from you,” Reacher said. “They’ll make it look like he left some evidence behind. ”
McGuire said nothing. Reacher swung the leg of the stool.
“Left or right?” he asked.
“What?” McGuire said.
“Which arm you want me to break first?”
"LaSalle Kruger,” McGuire said. "Supply battalion CO. He’s a colonel.”
25
STEALING THE PHONE was candy from a baby, but the reconnaissance is a bitch. Timing it right was the first priority. You needed to wait for complete darkness, and you wanted to wait for the daytime cop’s final hour. Because the cop is dumber than the Bureau guy, and because somebody’s last hour is always better than somebody else’s first hour. Attention will have waned. Boredom will have set in. His eyes will have glazed and he’ll be thinking ahead to a beer with his buddies or a night in front of the television with his wife. Or however the hell he spends his downtime.
So your window extends to about forty minutes, say seven to seven-forty. You plan it in two halves. First the house, then the surrounding area. You drive back from the airport and you approach on the through road. You drive straight through the junction three streets from her house. You stop at a hikers’ parking area two hundred yards farther north. There’s a wide gravel trail leading east up the slope of Mount Hood. You get out of your car and you turn your back on the trail and you work your way west and north through lightly wooded terrain. You’re about level with your first position, but on the other side of her house, behind it, not in front of it.
The terrain means the houses don’t have big yards. There are slim cultivated strips behind the buildings, then fences, then steep hillside covered in wild brush. You ease through the brush and come out at her fence. Stand motionless in the dark and observe. Drapes are drawn. It’s quiet. You can hear a piano playing, very faintly. The house is built into the hillside, and it’s at right angles to the street. The side is really the front. The porch runs all the way along it. Facing you is a wall dotted with windows. No doors. You ease along the fence and check the other side, which is really the back of the house. No doors there either. So the only ways in are the front door on the porch, and the garage door facing the street. Not ideal, but it’s what you expected. You’ve planned for it. You’ve planned for every contingency.
"OK, COLONEL KRUGER,” Leighton said. "We’re on your ass now.”
They were back in the duty office, damp from the jog through the nighttime rain, high with elation, flushed with cold air and success. Handshakes had been exchanged, high fives had been smacked, Harper had laughed and hugged Reacher. Now Leighton was scrolling through a menu on his computer screen, and Reacher and Harper were sitting side by side in front of his desk on the old upright chairs, breathing hard. Harper was still smiling, basking in relief and triumph.
“Loved that business with the stool,” she said. “We watched the whole thing on the video screen.”
Reacher shrugged.
“I cheated,” he said. “I chose the right stool, is all. I figured visiting time, that sergeant sits on the one by the door, wriggles around a little because he’s bored. Guy that size, the joints were sure to be cracked. The thing practically fell apart.”
“But it looked real good.”
“That was the plan. First rule is to look real good.”
“OK, he’s in the personnel listings,” Leighton said. "LaSalle Kruger, bird colonel, right there.”
He tapped the screen with his nail. It made the same glassy thunk they’d heard before. Like a bottle.
>
“Has he been in trouble?” Reacher asked.
“Can’t tell, yet,” Leighton said. “You think he’ll have an MP record?”
“Something happened,” Reacher said. “Special Forces in Desert Storm, and now he’s working supply? What’s that about?”
Leighton nodded. “It needs explaining. Could be disciplinary, I guess.”
He exited the personnel listings and clicked on another menu. Then he paused.
“This will take all night,” he said.
Reacher smiled. “You mean you don’t want us to see anything.”
Leighton smiled back. “Right first time, pal. You can smack the prisoners around as much as you want, but you can’t look at the computer stuff. You know how it is.”
“I sure do,” Reacher said.
Leighton waited.
“That inventory thing about the jeep tires?” Harper said suddenly. “Could you trace some missing camouflage paint in there?”
“Maybe,” Leighton said. “Theoretically, I guess.”
“Eleven women on his list, look for about three hundred gallons,” she said. “If you could put Kruger together with the paint, that would do it for me.”
Leighton nodded.
“And dates,” she said. “Find out if he was off duty when the women were killed. And match the locations, I guess. Confirm there were thefts where the women served. Prove they saw something.”
Leighton looked across at her. “The Army is going to just love me, right? Kruger’s our guy, and I’m busting my ass all night so we can give him away to the Bureau.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But the jurisdiction issue is clear, isn’t it? Homicide beats theft.”
Leighton nodded, suddenly somber.
“Like scissors beats paper,” he said.
YOU’VE SEEN ENOUGH of the house. Standing there in the dark staring at it and listening to her play the damn piano isn’t going to change anything. So you step away from the fence and duck into the brush and work your way east and south, back toward the car. You get there and dust yourself off and slide in and start it up and head back down through the crossroads. Part two of your task ahead, and you’ve got about twenty minutes to complete it in. You drive on. There’s a small shopping center two miles west of the junction, left-hand side of the road. An old-fashioned one-story mall, shaped like a squared-off letter C. A supermarket in the middle like a keystone, small single-unit stores spreading either side of it. Some of them are boarded up and empty. You pull into the parking lot at the far end and you nose along the fire lane, looking. You find exactly what you want, three stores past the supermarket. It’s nothing you didn’t expect to find, but still you clench your fist and bang it on the rim of the steering wheel. You smile to yourself.