by Lee Child
Tougher with Neagley, because she was heading for something. Her private business, and he didn’t know where or what it was. So, first principles. What did he know about her? What would be the determining factor? Well, she was cheap. Not because she was poor or a miser, but because she didn’t see the point in spending a buck on something she didn’t need. And she didn’t need much. She didn’t need turn-down service or a mint on the pillow. She didn’t need room service or tomorrow’s weather forecast. She didn’t need fluffy robes and complementary slippers heat-sealed in cellophane. All she needed was a bed and a door that locked. And crowds, and shadows, and the kind of anonymous low-rent transient neighborhoods where bartenders and desk clerks had short memories.
So, scratch downtown. Not Beverly Hills, either.
So where? Where in the vastness of LA would she be comfortable?
There were twenty-one thousand miles of surface streets to choose from.
Reacher asked himself, Where would I go?
Hollywood, he answered. A little ways south and east of the good stuff. The wrong stretch of Sunset.
That’s where I would go, he thought.
And that’s where she’ll be.
The plane landed at LAX a little late, well after lunch. There had been no meal service on board and Reacher was hungry. Samantha the Portland prosecutor had served him coffee and a bran muffin for breakfast, but that seemed like a long time ago.
He didn’t stop to eat. Just headed out to the taxi line and got a Korean guy in a yellow Toyota minivan who wanted to talk about boxing. Reacher knew nothing about boxing and cared less. The sport’s obvious artificiality turned him off. Padded gloves and above-the-belt rules had no place in his world. And he didn’t like talking. So he just sat quietly in the back and let the guy ramble on. He watched the hot brown afternoon light through the window. Palm trees, movie billboards, light gray traffic lanes striped with endless twin tracks of rubber. And cars, rivers of cars, floods of cars. He saw a new Rolls-Royce and an old Citroën DS, both black. A bloodred MGA and a pastel blue ’57 Thunderbird, both open. A yellow 1960 Corvette nose-to-tail with a green 2007 model. He figured if you watched LA traffic long enough you would see one of every automobile ever manufactured.
The driver took the 101 north and exited a block from Sunset. Reacher got out on the off-ramp and paid the fare. Hiked south and turned left and faced east. He knew Sunset had a dense knot of cheap places right there, both sides of the boulevard, covering about three-quarters of a mile. The air was southern California warm and smelled of dust and gasoline fumes. He stood still. He had a potential mile-and-a-half walk ahead of him, down and back, and a dozen motel desks to canvass. An hour-long task, maybe more. He was hungry. He could see a Denny’s sign ahead and on the right. A chain diner. He decided to eat first and work later.
He walked past parked cars and vacant lots boxed in by hurricane fencing. Stepped over trash and softball-sized tumbleweeds. Recrossed the 101 on a long bridge. Entered the Denny’s lot by cutting across a grass shoulder and the drive-through lane. Walked past a long line of windows.
Saw Frances Neagley inside, sitting alone in a booth.
5
Reacher stood for a moment in the parking lot and watched Neagley through the window. She hadn’t changed much in the four years since he had last seen her. She had to be nearer forty than thirty now, but it wasn’t showing. Her hair was still long and dark and shiny. Her eyes were still dark and alive. She was still slim and lithe. Still spending serious time in the gym. That was clear. She was wearing a tight white T-shirt with tiny cap sleeves and it would have taken an electron microscope to find any body fat on her arms. Or anyplace else.
She was a little tan, which looked good with her coloring. Her nails were done. Her T-shirt looked like a quality item. Overall she looked richer than he remembered her. Comfortable, at home in her world, successful, accustomed to the civilian life. For a moment he felt awkward about his own cheap clothes and his scuffed shoes and his bad barbershop haircut. Like she was making it, and he wasn’t. Then the pleasure of seeing an old friend swamped the thought and he walked on through the lot to the door. Went in and stepped past the Please Wait to Be Seated sign and slid straight into her booth. She looked up at him across the table and smiled.
“Hello,” she said.
“To you, too,” he said.
“Want lunch?”
“That was my plan.”
“So let’s order, now you’re finally here.”
He said, “You sound like you were waiting for me.”
“I was. And you’re about on time.”
“Am I?”
Neagley smiled again. “You called my office guy from Portland, Oregon. He saw the caller ID. Traced it to a pay phone at the bus depot. We figured you’d head straight for the airport. Then I figured you’d take United. You must hate Alaska Airlines. Then a cab ride here. Your ETA was easy enough to predict.”
“You knew I would come here? To this diner?”
“Like you taught me, back in the day.”
“I didn’t teach you anything.”
“You did,” Neagley said. “Remember? Think like them, be them. So I was being you being me. You’d figure I’d head for Hollywood. You’d start right here on Sunset. But there’s no meal on United from Portland, so I figured you’d be hungry and want to eat first. There are a couple of possible places on the block but this one has the biggest sign and you’re no gourmet. So I decided to meet you here.”
“Meet me here? I thought I was tracking you.”
“You were. And I was tracking you tracking me.”
“Are you staying here? In Hollywood?”
She shook her head. “Beverly Hills. The Wilshire.”
“So you came out here just to scoop me up?”
“I got here ten minutes ago.”
“The Beverly Wilshire? You’ve changed.”
“Not really. It’s the world that has changed. Cheap motels don’t do it for me anymore. I need e-mail and the internet and FedEx service now. Business centers and concierges.”
“You make me feel old-fashioned.”
“You’re improving. You use ATMs now.”
“That was a good move. The bank balance message.”
“You taught me well.”
“I didn’t teach you anything.”
“Like hell.”
“But it was an extravagant move,” Reacher said. “Ten dollars and thirty cents would have worked just as well. Maybe even better, with the period between the ten and the thirty.”
Neagley said, “I thought you might need the airfare.”
Reacher said nothing.
“I found your account, obviously,” Neagley said. “Wasn’t too much more trouble to hack in and take a look. You’re not rich.”
“I don’t want to be rich.”
“I know. But I didn’t want you to have to respond to my ten-thirty on your own dime. That wouldn’t have been fair.”
Reacher shrugged and let it go. Truth was, he wasn’t rich. Truth was, he was almost poor. His savings had eroded to the point where he was starting to think about how to boost them back up again. Maybe a couple of months of casual labor were in his future. Or some other kind of a score. The waitress came over with menus. Neagley ordered without looking, a cheeseburger and a soda. Reacher matched her for speed, tuna melt and hot coffee. The waitress retrieved the menus and went away.
Reacher said, “So are you going to tell me what your ten-thirty was for exactly?”
Neagley answered him by leaning down and pulling a black three-ring binder out of a tote bag on the floor. She passed it across the table. It was a copy of an autopsy report.
“Calvin Franz is dead,” she said. “I think someone threw him out of an airplane.”
6
The past, which meant the army. Calvin Franz had been an MP and Reacher’s exact contemporary and pretty much his equal all the way through his thirteen years of service. They had met here and th
ere in the way that brother officers often tended to, rubbing shoulders in different parts of the world for a day or two at a time, consulting on the phone, crossing paths when two or more investigations had tangled or collided. Then they had done a serious spell together in Panama. Quality time. It had been very short but very intense, and they had seen things in each other that left them feeling more like real brothers than brother officers. After Reacher had been rehabilitated from his temporary demotion disgrace and given the special investigations operation to build, Franz’s name had been near the top of his personnel wish list. They had spent the next two years together in a real unit-within-a-unit hothouse. They had become fast friends. Then as often happened in the army, new orders had come in and the special operation had been disbanded and Reacher had never seen Franz again.
Until that moment, in an autopsy photograph punched into a three-ring binder laid flat on a sticky laminate table in a cheap diner.
In life Franz had been smaller than Reacher but bigger than most other people. Maybe six-three and two-ten. Powerful upper body, low waist, short legs. Primitive, in a way. Like a caveman. But overall he had been reasonably handsome. He had been calm, resolute, capable, relaxing to be around. His manner had tended to reassure people.
He looked awful in the autopsy photograph. He was laid out flat and naked on a stainless tray and the camera’s flash had bleached his skin pale green.
Awful.
But then, dead people often looked pretty bad.
Reacher asked, “How did you get this?”
Neagley said, “I can usually get things.”
Reacher said nothing in reply to that and turned the page. Started in on the dense mass of technical information. The corpse had been measured at six feet three inches in length and weighed a hundred and ninety pounds. Cause of death was given as multiple organ failure due to massive impact trauma. Both legs were broken. Ribs were cracked. The bloodstream was flooded with free histamines. The body was severely dehydrated and the stomach held nothing but mucus. There was evidence of rapid recent weight loss and no evidence of recent food consumption. Trace evidence from the recovered clothing was unexceptional, apart from unexplained ferrous oxide powder ground into both pant legs, low down, on the shins, below the knee and above the ankle.
Reacher asked, “Where was he found?”
Neagley said, “In the desert about fifty miles north and east of here. Hard sand, small rocks, a hundred yards off the shoulder of a road. No footprints coming or going.”
The waitress brought the food. Reacher paused as she unloaded her tray and then started his sandwich, left-handed, to keep his right grease-free for turning the autopsy pages.
Neagley said, “Two deputies in a car saw buzzards circling. Went to check. Hiked out there. They said it was like he had fallen out of the sky. The pathologist agrees.”
Reacher nodded. He was reading the doctor’s conclusion, which was that a free fall from maybe three thousand feet onto hard sand could have produced the right amount of impact and caused the internal injuries observed, if Franz had happened to land flat on his back, which was aerodynamically possible if he had been alive and flailing his arms during the fall. A dead weight would have fallen on its head.
Neagley said, “They made the ID through his fingerprints.”
Reacher asked, “How did you find out?”
“His wife called me. Three days ago. Seems he kept all our names in his book. A special page. His buddies, from back in the day. I was the only one she could find.”
“I didn’t know he was married.”
“It was recent. They have a kid, four years old.”
“Was he working?”
Neagley nodded. “He set up as a private eye. A one-man band. Originally, some strategic advice for corporations. But now mostly background checks. Database stuff. You know how thorough he was.”
“Where?”
“Here in LA.”
“Did all of you set up as private eyes?”
“Most of us, I think.”
“Except me.”
“It was the only marketable skill we had.”
“What did Franz’s wife want you to do?”
“Nothing. She was just telling me.”
“She doesn’t want answers?”
“The cops are on it. LA County sheriff, actually. Where he was found is technically part of LA County. Outside of the LAPD’s jurisdiction, so it’s down to a couple of local deputies. They’re working on the airplane thing. They figure it was maybe flying west out of Vegas. That kind of thing has happened to them before.”
Reacher said, “It wasn’t an airplane.”
Neagley said nothing.
Reacher said, “An airplane has a stall speed of, what? A hundred miles an hour? Eighty? He’d have come out the door horizontal into the slipstream. He’d have smashed against the wing or the tail. We’d see perimortem injuries.”
“He had two broken legs.”
“How long does it take to freefall three thousand feet?”
“Twenty seconds?”
“His blood was full of free histamines. That’s a massive pain reaction. Twenty seconds between injury and death wouldn’t have even gotten it started.”
“So?”
“The broken legs were old. Two, three days minimum. Maybe more. You know what ferrous oxide is?”
“Rust,” Neagley said. “On iron.”
Reacher nodded. “Someone broke his legs with an iron bar. Probably one at a time. Probably tied him to a post. Aimed for his shins. Hard enough to break the bone and grind rust particles into the weave of his pants. Must have hurt like hell.”
Neagley said nothing.
“And they starved him,” Reacher said. “Didn’t let him drink. He was twenty pounds underweight. He was a prisoner, two or three days. Maybe more. They were torturing him.”
Neagley said nothing.
Reacher said, “It was a helicopter. Probably at night. Stationary hover, three thousand feet up. Out the door and straight down.” Then he closed his eyes and pictured his old friend, tumbling, twenty seconds in the dark, cartwheeling, flailing, not knowing where the ground was. Not knowing exactly when he would hit. Two shattered legs trailing painfully behind him.
“Therefore it probably wasn’t coming from Vegas,” he said. He opened his eyes. “The round-trip would be out of range for most helicopters. It was probably coming north and east out of LA. The deputies are barking up the wrong tree.”
Neagley sat quiet.
“Coyote food,” Reacher said. “The perfect disposal method. No tracks. The airflow during the fall strips away hairs and fibers. No forensics at all. Which is why they threw him out alive. They could have shot him first, but they didn’t even want to risk ballistics evidence.”
Reacher was quiet for a long moment. Then he closed the black binder and reversed it and pushed it back across the table.
“But you know all this anyway,” he said. “Don’t you? You can read. You’re testing me again. Seeing if my brain still works.”
Neagley said nothing.
Reacher said, “You’re playing me like a violin.”
Neagley said nothing.
Reacher asked, “Why did you bring me here?”
“Like you said, the deputies are barking up the wrong tree.”
“So?”
“You have to do something.”
“I will do something. Believe it. There are dead men walking, as of right now. You don’t throw my friends out of helicopters and live to tell the tale.”
Neagley said, “No, I want you to do something else.”
“Like what?”
“I want you to put the old unit back together.”
7
The old unit. It had been a typical U.S. Army invention. About three years after the need for it had become blindingly obvious to everyone else, the Pentagon had started to think about it. After another year of committees and meetings, the suits and the brass had signed off on the idea. I
t had been dumped on someone’s desk and a mad panic had started to get it going. Orders had been drawn up. Obviously no sane CO had wanted to touch it with a stick, so a new unit had been carved out of the 110th MP. Success was desirable but failure had to be deniable, so they went looking for a competent pariah to command it.
Reacher had been the obvious choice.
They thought his reward was promotion back to major again, but the real satisfaction for him was the chance to do something properly for once. His way. They had given him a free hand in personnel selection. He had enjoyed that. He had figured that a special investigations unit needed the best the army had to offer, and he had figured he knew who and where they were. He had wanted a small unit, for speed and flexibility, and no clerical support, to prevent leaks. He had figured they could do their own paperwork, or not, as they deemed necessary. In the end he had settled on eight names in addition to his own: Tony Swan, Jorge Sanchez, Calvin Franz, Frances Neagley, Stanley Lowrey, Manuel Orozco, David O’Donnell, and Karla Dixon. Dixon and Neagley were the only women and Neagley was the only NCO. The others were all officers. O’Donnell and Lowrey were captains and the rest were all majors, which was totally screwed up in terms of a coherent chain of command, but Reacher didn’t care. He knew that nine people working closely would operate laterally rather than vertically, which in the event was exactly what happened. The unit had organized itself like a small-market baseball team enjoying an unlikely pennant run: talented journeymen working together, no stars, no egos, mutually supportive, and above all ruthlessly and relentlessly effective.
Reacher said, “That was all a long time ago.”
“We have to do something,” Neagley said. “All of us. Collectively. You do not mess with the special investigators. Remember that?”