THE JACK REACHER FILES: ANNEX 1 (A Novel of Suspense)

by Jude Hardin

  Clark was dead now. Maybe the other guy was too, but Colt didn’t think so. Whoever had killed Clark would have killed the other guy at the same location. There would have been two dead bodies instead of one. There would have been no point in splitting them up. Two different places, twice the chance of getting caught. Twice the chance of something going wrong.

  Colt walked outside and climbed into the rental car and drove back to the library. A few patrons had trickled in, and he had to put his name on the waiting list for a computer. He started to pencil in Derek, and then he decided to just make something up. It wasn’t like the librarian was going to ask him for an ID, and there was no point in leaving any sort of trail for Diana. Not that anything was really going to help him at this point. She would find him easily enough. In fact, she probably knew where he was right now.

  Colt browsed the stacks until the librarian called his name.

  “You have thirty minutes,” she said. “Please try to keep track of your time. And please try to exit a few minutes early, if possible. We have quite a few people waiting this morning.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He sat down and logged into Facebook and typed Clark Kisham into the search bar. There were four, but only one had a bunch of condolences posted on his wall, friends trying to comfort each other over the news of his death. Clark had 346 friends, and it was possible that one of them had walked into Mac’s Diner with him the night of the robbery. If Colt could find Clark’s partner in crime, he might be able to get what he needed to nail Jack Reacher. It was a long shot, but he felt that it might be his only chance at this point.

  Colt eliminated Kisham’s female friends right off the bat, and then he eliminated all of his male friends who lived in other states.

  Which left 63.

  63 male friends who lived in the DC area.

  Still too many.

  If Colt had all the time in the world, he could do background checks on each of them, try to narrow it down. But he didn’t have all the time in the world. In less than two hours, there was a very good chance that Diana Dawkins was going to put a bullet in his brain. He didn’t have time to check all of Kisham’s male friends in the DC area, so he decided to pick some at random and hope to beat the odds.

  He scrolled through the list, jotted down ten of the names.

  The librarian tapped him on the shoulder. “Your time is almost up,” she said.

  “You don’t even know how true that is.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind. How long will I have to wait to use the computer again?”

  She looked at her clipboard. “I would say at least an hour. Would you like for me to put your name at the bottom of the list?”

  “No thanks.”

  Colt left the library and headed back toward Walmart. He’d looked at some laptops and tablets earlier, but had hesitated on purchasing one because of the cost. He needed money for a place to stay, and for gasoline, and for food, and his funds were dwindling quickly. But he had to have a computer, and he couldn’t keep stopping every thirty minutes and waiting for his turn to come back around at the library.

  He pulled into Walmart’s parking lot, found a spot near the entrance, killed the engine and started to climb out. Then something came to him. He’d seen the living room and the kitchen and the basement at the Kisham house, but he hadn’t bothered exploring the bedrooms. Once he’d found the diamond earring, there was really no point in looking any further. He’d known then that Clark was his man. But if Clark was active on social media, it made sense that there would be a computer in the house.

  Or maybe not. Maybe Clark had a portable device that he took with him everywhere, a netbook or a smart phone or whatever.

  Colt sat there for a few minutes, finally decided the house was worth a try. He also decided that it would be crazy to pay for a hotel when the house was vacant and there for the taking. It was filthy and it smelled bad, but it would be a roof over his head and there was electricity and it was free.

  And, being where it was, in that ghost town of a neighborhood, it might even be a good place to hide from Diana. Assuming she wasn’t perched somewhere watching him through a scope this very minute, of course.

  He started the car and steered out of the parking lot and headed back toward the Kisham place.

  32

  Benny had been gone for a while.

  JR sat in the chair by the couch and smoked a couple of cigarettes, finally got up and walked down the hall and came back wearing khaki shorts and a t-shirt and a pair of sandals.

  “Where is that numbskull?” he said.

  “Maybe there was a line at the store.”

  JR lit another cigarette. “It’s just a mile away. How long could it take?”

  “I really am hungry,” Felisa said. “Don’t you think it’s pretty cruel to starve me like this?”

  “If he doesn’t get back pretty soon, we’re going to be late for our meeting. It’s going to mess everything up. The bus, everything.”

  JR was growing more and more anxious by the minute. He kept pacing across the living room, pausing every few seconds to look out the door, smoking one cigarette after another.

  “What time is the meeting?” Felisa said.

  “Shut up.”

  “I was just thinking, maybe we could walk out to the highway and hitch a ride to town. You know, if he doesn’t get back soon.”

  “He’ll be back soon. If he’s not, I’m going to kill him.”

  JR had hit Felisa before. She didn’t want to push too many buttons, not while he was jonesing for a beer and stressing out over every tick of the clock. She didn’t want to aggravate the situation too much, but if she could convince him that she was on his side, maybe she could eventually use his anxiety to her advantage. If she could get close enough to him, maybe she could jam her thumbs into his eye sockets. Like the Chinese guy in the movie.

  “I don’t blame you,” she said. “I would kill him too. In fact, I’ll help you if you want me to.”

  “What?”

  “Look, you’re obviously the brains of this outfit. Benny just doesn’t seem to have a clue about anything most of the time. I can help you. We can plan this out together.”

  JR walked over to the couch and backhanded Felisa across the face.

  “I told you to shut up,” he said.

  Then he lit another cigarette and started pacing again.

  33

  Colt found an old IBM desktop in one of the bedrooms, the CRT monitor screen a gray void and the keyboard coated with a layer of dust. He plugged it in and powered it up and clicked on an icon for the Internet browser, discovering right away that the connection was through a dial-up service.

  Excruciatingly slow, but better than nothing.

  He navigated to one of the sites that he once used for background checks, back in the good old days when he was just a regular old private investigator. Back when he had a house and a wife and a daughter and an Airstream camper at the lake. Back when his best friend was still alive.

  He clicked on the NEW MEMBERS START HERE button and opened an account with the Derek Ray Green license and the company debit card—which, to his surprise, had not been canceled yet. He didn’t care about the electronic trail anymore. It was too late in the game for any of that to matter. In a little over an hour he would be fair game for Diana Dawkins, and the time had come to throw all caution to the wind. It probably wouldn’t save him from having his skull blown apart, but he didn’t see how it could hurt him.

  He pulled out the list of Clark Kisham’s Facebook friends, ran a check on the first name, a thirty-four-year-old white guy named Timothy McMarkley. The file showed a bankruptcy and a divorce and a misdemeanor conviction for the possession of marijuana. Quite a list for a man his age, but nothing that would indicate a history of violence. Colt wrote down his current address and phone number, and his place of employment. He probably wasn’t the guy, but he had been in some trouble with the law, so he might be worth a c
loser look.

  The next two guys had clean records. They each had a few traffic tickets back when they were teenagers, but nothing recent. Colt scratched them off the list.

  The fourth guy had been in and out of foster homes as a child and had been arrested on a felony assault charge when he was twenty-two and a burglary charge when he was twenty-four. He’d gotten three years of probation the first time around and had spent sixty days in jail with five more years of probation the second. His name was Benjamin Korto.

  From the bedroom, Colt heard a slight rattle, followed by the cat-like moan of one-hundred-year-old brass hinges. Someone was coming in the front door.

  Colt got up and crept down the hallway toward the living room, his back against the wall and both hands wrapped around the grips of his .38. He peeked around the corner and saw a man lifting the cushions on the sofa, turning them over and sliding his fingers along the crevices as if he was searching for loose change.

  “Hands behind your head,” Colt said.

  The man jumped. Colt had startled him.

  “Who are you?” the man said.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “I’m Benny. I live here.”

  Thinning hair, dark brown eyes. Jeans and a stained white t-shirt and no shoes. He was big. Over six feet tall, over two hundred pounds. But he was soft in the middle, and his round face and double chin told a story of too many burgers and pizzas and mega-sized soft drinks.

  Benny.

  Benjamin.

  Highly unlikely, but possible.

  “Is your last name Korto?” Colt said.

  “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “I know a lot of things, Benny. For example, I know that you and a guy named Clark Kisham walked into a restaurant last week with masks and guns, and you walked out with some money and a young lady named—”

  Benny darted for the door. Colt shouted for him to stop, but he didn’t listen. He yanked the door open and stumbled out onto the porch and jumped all four steps and took off down the sidewalk toward his car.

  Colt didn’t want to shoot him. He needed this guy alive. In the movies, the secret government agent on the run from his own people might have drilled one in the back of the bad guy’s leg. But it doesn’t take long to bleed to death when a .38 slug clips a femoral artery. Colt didn’t want to risk it. He holstered the gun and ran after him, tackling him to the pavement a few feet before he reached the SUV.

  “Let me go,” Benny shouted.

  He turned onto his back and kicked, catching Colt with a heel to the right cheek bone. It was a solid blow, and Colt saw stars. He shook it off, grabbed Benny by the crotch with his left hand and drew the revolver with his right.

  He pressed the barrel against Benny’s fat chin.

  “I don’t want to blow your head off,” Colt said, breathing hard from the exertion. “But I will if I have to.”

  “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

  “Let’s go back inside the house and talk.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re not going to make me go back to jail?”

  “No. That’s the good news. But not being a cop means I don’t have to play by any rules. That’s what you need to be thinking about right now.”

  “I don’t have to play by any rules either,” Benny said.

  “Yeah. That’s where we are. But I have a gun, and you don’t.”

  Benny looked at the sky. “All right,” he said.

  Colt kept the revolver on him as he rose to a standing position.

  “I want you to start walking back toward the house,” Colt said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  They started walking back toward the house. Colt noticed that Benny’s elbows were bleeding from where he’d scraped them on the concrete. And his toes. The injuries must have been painful, but he showed no signs of distress.

  When they got back inside the house, Colt made him sit in the brown recliner, and then he tied his wrists and ankles with electrical cords. One from the lamp in the living room and one from the toaster in the kitchen.

  “The meeting’s at two o’clock,” Benny said. “We’re going to be late.”

  “What meeting?”

  “At the coffee place. No, I shouldn’t be telling you that. Never mind.”

  Colt didn’t know what Benny was talking about, and he didn’t really care. He didn’t have time to care.

  “I want you to listen to me closely, Benny. If you don’t answer my questions, I’m going to hurt you. Bad. I’m not going to kill you, but you’ll wish you were dead. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I’m not very good on tests. What if I don’t know the answers?”

  “Tell me about Jack Reacher,” Colt said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Come on, Benny. You know who it is. He drove the getaway car the night you and Clark robbed the diner. The van. He was waiting outside for you guys.”

  “I don’t know anybody named Jack Reacher. Wait—are you talking about JR?”

  “Is he the guy who drove the van?”

  “Yeah. His name is JR.”

  “You don’t know what those initials stand for?”

  “No. He never would tell us. He said it was just JR, and that was all we needed to know. He’s a scary man. He hits me sometimes, and he tells me I’m stupid.”

  “Where is he now?” Colt said.

  “Back at the trailer. He’s going to be really mad. He told me to get some beer, and I drove over here instead. To look for the other—”

  Benny didn’t finish his sentence. He shook his head and clenched his teeth, obviously angry with himself for almost saying too much again.

  “Did you come here to look for the other one of these?” Colt said, holding up the diamond earring he’d found earlier.

  Benny nodded. “Now I guess you know everything. JR’s going to be so angry.”

  “Is Felisa Cayenne back at the trailer with JR?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there guns in the house?”

  “Yes. JR has a machinegun, and a pistol.”

  Colt was banking on JR being Jack Reacher. You’re not to engage with him at any time, Valinger had said. But Colt didn’t have a choice now. He didn’t have time to do it any other way.

  “You and I are going for a ride, Benny. You’re going to show me where to find JR and Felisa Cayenne.”

  “I don’t want to go back to jail.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to. We’ll see how it goes. But right now I need your help. I need you to show me the way to the trailer. Okay?”

  Benny swallowed hard, and then he nodded. “Okay,” he said.

  34

  Traffic was light, and it only took thirty minutes to get from Clark Kisham’s decaying bungalow in DC to the turnoff that led to JR’s place in the country. Colt drove the SUV with Benny tied up in the back. He didn’t want to make JR nervous by showing up in a strange vehicle. On the way, Benny told Colt all about the two o’clock meeting, about his and JR’s plan to exchange Felisa Cayenne for a large amount of cash. Benny didn’t know exactly how much, just that it would be a whole bunch of money.

  “But you don’t know who it is you’re meeting with?” Colt said.

  “No. Hey, we should stop here and get the beer JR wanted.”

  Colt steered into the corner CigsMart, which seemed to be fairly busy considering the location.

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” he said.

  He walked inside, paid cash for a twelve pack, carried it back out to the car. He opened the back door and untied the electrical cords from Benny’s wrists and ankles.

  Benny flexed his fingers and shook the circulation back into his hands. “That’s not the kind JR likes,” he said, referring to the beer.

  “That’s okay. It’s the kind I like. I’m going to get back here in the back seat, and you’re going to drive the rest of the way. I’ll be lying on my side
with the gun pointed at you, so don’t try anything. When we get there, I want you to climb out and carry the beer in as if nothing had happened.”

  “He’s going to wonder what took so long.”

  “Just tell him the truth. Tell him you drove over to Clark’s house to look for the other diamond.”

  “Anyway, he’s going to want to leave right away. It’s almost time for our meeting.”

  “I know.”

  Colt was planning an ambush. When JR brought Felisa out to leave for the meeting, Colt would pop out from behind the SUV with a .38 and a mandate: get on the ground, or get a bullet in the chest. JR wouldn’t have time to react. He wouldn’t have time to go for his pistol. He would be forced to comply. He wouldn’t have a choice.

  Once he was facedown on the ground, Colt could get down to the business of interrogation. Felisa would be there to help. She could hold a gun on JR while Colt restrained him with the electrical cords. No chance for any hand-to-hand, which—according to the files—Jack Reacher was very good at. Colt did not want to fight this guy. Reacher was too big, too strong, and too skilled. One punch and it would be lights out. Better to tie him up and leave nothing to chance.

  Benny was the only wildcard, but he had promised to cooperate in exchange for his freedom. The Circle didn’t have any interest in him, and therefore neither did Colt. If everything went well, Colt would let him go.

  Benny slid in behind the wheel. “You’re not going to kill JR, are you?”

  It was a good question. If JR was Jack Reacher, and if he was responsible for the abandoned van full of explosives on the president’s route to Andrews—or if he was behind any other activity that could be construed as hostile toward the United States of America—then he was going to die. No question about it. If not by Colt’s hand, then by someone else’s.

  But killing him was not on Colt’s agenda. It wasn’t his primary objective, at least not yet. Right now he was only interested in gathering enough information to get himself out of hot water with The Circle. He believed in the cause, the big picture, but right now he was just trying to save his own skin.