The Reacher Experiment

by Jude Hardin

  Wahlman set his suitcase down and turned some lights on. There was a loveseat in the living room and a wingback chair and a small folding table that you could put your drink on while you were watching television. Pine planks overhead, exposed beams and a ceiling fan that wasn’t much to look at but helped move the air around, helped with the heating and air conditioning costs, which were minimal in such a small space anyway but every little bit helped.

  Wahlman had driven by Mike Chilton’s place on the way home, hoping that Mike might still be up, hoping to find out why he wasn’t answering his phone. It was late and the house was dark and he knew that Mike might be asleep, but he’d walked up on the porch and knocked anyway. Mike never came to the door. Which didn’t necessarily mean that anything was wrong, because Mike was the soundest sleeper Wahlman had ever known. The shrillest of alarm clocks were of no use to him, and he’d even slept through a hurricane one time. You pretty much had to grab him and shake him to wake him up. So Wahlman wasn’t terribly worried that he hadn’t answered the door. His car had been in the garage and the house had looked okay. No mail in the mailbox, no circulars littering the driveway. Wahlman had driven away, planning to check again in the morning but figuring that Mike was just being Mike.

  Wahlman walked to the bathroom, peeled his clothes off and took a long hot shower. He put on a fresh pair of boxer shorts and nothing else and went into the kitchen and made a peanut butter sandwich and opened a bottle of beer. He sat down and looked at his mail. Phone bill, electric bill, a credit card offer, sales papers from some of the local stores.

  And a letter from Clifford T. Drake, Attorney at Law.

  Fake Drake.

  Wahlman hadn’t tried the number on the business card yet. He hadn’t wanted to mess with it while he was driving, because there was still a digit he was unsure of.

  He tore the envelope open and read the letter, which was nothing formal, just a handwritten note.

  Dear Mr. Wahlman,

  I’m sorry you were unable to make it to our appointment Sunday afternoon. I’ve tried calling several times, but there was no answer. Please call me at your earliest convenience.

  Thanks,

  C.T. Drake

  There was a phone number at the bottom of the note. Wahlman checked it against the one on the business card. It was the same. Allison had been correct. The illegible digit on the business card had been a two.

  Wahlman used Allison’s phone to make the call.

  Four rings, and then a sleepy male voice picked up and grunted hello.

  “This is Wahlman.”

  Silence for a beat.

  “Where are you?” the male voice asked, sounding a little perkier now, undoubtedly noticing the incoming area code and thinking the call had originated in New Orleans.

  “It’s none of your business where I am,” Wahlman said.

  “You sound angry. If anyone should be angry, it should be me. Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “This was my earliest convenience.”

  “I see. Well, if you wouldn’t mind—”

  “Why did you kill Darrell Renfro? Why are you trying to kill me?”

  “What?”

  “A woman named Allison Bentley is dead now too. I guess you’re going to tell me you don’t know anything about that either. I guess you’re going to stick with your story about the inheritance. I did a little research. Once upon a time there was indeed a lawyer in New Orleans named Clifford T. Drake. He even specialized in estate planning. But—”

  “He was my father,” the male voice said. “My full name is Clifford Terrence Drake Junior.”

  “You’re lying,” Wahlman said. “There was no mention of a son in the obituary.”

  “My father and I had a falling out about ten years ago. He sort of disowned me. Cut me out of his will, the whole nine yards. I can tell that you’re really upset, Mr. Wahlman, but I can promise you I had nothing to do with the things you’re talking about.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “Well, you could check my Louisiana Bar credentials. It’s all a matter of public record.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” Wahlman said.

  “Good. Call me back in the morning and we’ll talk some more.”

  The man claiming to be Clifford Terrence Drake Junior hung up without saying another word.

  Wahlman set the phone down, ate the rest of his sandwich and drank the rest of his beer. He put his dishes in the sink and walked to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, and when he finished he stood there and looked at his reflection in the mirror.

  “That guy’s full of shit,” he said, staring into his own tired eyes. “Even if his name really is Clifford Terrence Drake Junior, and even if he really is an estate attorney, and even if his office really is under renovation. Even if all that’s true, it doesn’t mean that he’s not responsible for what happened on the interstate and in the sandwich shop and in Allison’s hotel room. Right? Because someone’s definitely trying to kill me. There’s no doubt about that. Someone who knew exactly where I was supposed to be Sunday afternoon and exactly when I was supposed to be there. It had to be Drake. It had to be. The only other person who knew about that meeting was Mike Chilton. So it had to be Drake, right?”

  Wahlman’s reflection said nothing.

  17

  Wahlman woke up at the usual time Tuesday morning.

  5:27.

  Which meant that he’d only slept about two hours. Which meant that he should have been dragging ass. But he wasn’t. He felt energized, ready to go. Only not in a good way. More like a mechanical toy that had been wound too tightly, torqued to the breaking point and then pointed toward the edge of a table.

  He couldn’t find a clean pair of jeans, so he put on the same pair he’d worn yesterday, along with a white t-shirt and a striped button-down. He drank a pot of coffee and watched some news on television, and then he grabbed Mike Chilton’s spare set of keys and left the cabin.

  Mike lived in a nice big house on the other side of the lake. He’d done well for himself after the navy, finishing his master’s degree and starting a software consultant company. He spent sixteen hours a day in his office sometimes, seven days a week sometimes, but he always said he enjoyed the work, and he certainly was raking in the dough. Wahlman wasn’t jealous of Mike’s success. Not even a little bit. Mike was his best friend, and he was happy for him.

  Wahlman steered into Mike’s driveway, cut the engine and climbed out of the truck and mounted the porch and knocked on the front door.

  No answer.

  It was a little after nine, and Mike was usually up by eight. His car was still in the garage, so it didn’t seem likely that he’d gone anywhere.

  Of course it was possible that he was still in bed.

  Wahlman didn’t usually enter Mike’s house without being invited, but the intrusion seemed warranted under the circumstances. He slid the key into the deadbolt and opened the door and stepped into the foyer. To his right there was a set of stairs that led to the bedrooms on the second floor. He shouted Mike’s name, waited a few seconds, climbed the stairs and walked to the master bedroom. As he reached to open the door, Allison’s cell phone trilled.

  Wahlman looked at the display, saw that it was Detective Collins.

  Collins.

  With everything else that had happened over the past twenty-four hours, Wahlman had kind of pushed Collins to the back of his mind. He pretty much knew what was coming, knew that it wasn’t going to be good, but he figured there was no escaping it now. Best to just go ahead and deal with it.

  He tapped the screen and answered the call.

  “This is Wahlman,” he said.

  “Collins, NOPD Homicide. I need you to come to the station as soon as possible.”

  “I drove home,” Wahlman said. “I’m in Florida.”

  Collins sighed. “There was a double homicide in the hotel you were staying at,” he said. “A man and a woman. The coroner thinks t
wo different guns were used, neither of which were found on the premises. The cell phone you’re talking on is registered to the woman.”

  “You guys work fast,” Wahlman said.

  “I need you to come to the station.”

  “I didn’t shoot her.”

  Collins sighed some more. “I also received some footage from a security camera this morning,” he said. “It shows you exiting the back door of the sandwich shop across from the hotel, and it shows you running up the alley toward Canal Street. This was right around the time the owner of the restaurant was shot. Man named Walter Babineaux.”

  “I didn’t shoot him either.”

  “I want to believe you, Wahlman. I don’t think you had anything to do with Darrell Renfro out there on the interstate, and I want to believe you didn’t have anything to do with Babineaux in the sandwich shop or the man and the woman in the hotel. I want to believe you, but—”

  “Is Babineaux still alive?”

  “Last I heard.”

  “Is he conscious? Has anyone talked to him yet?”

  “I’m not going to sugarcoat this,” Collins said, ignoring Wahlman’s questions. “We have a warrant for your arrest. Assault with intent to kill. We’re working on a second warrant, and that one’s going to be for first degree murder. I need you to drive to the nearest sheriff’s department substation and turn yourself in. They’ll get the extradition process started, get you transferred back to New Orleans before the end of the week. Otherwise, we’re going to have to initiate a—”

  “Who do you think I murdered?” Wahlman asked.

  “The woman in the hotel room. The man too. But you have the woman’s phone, so it’s going to be—”

  “Her name’s Allison.”

  “Right. So you knew her. I can go ahead and take a confession over the phone if—”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Wahlman said. “I killed the man, but not Allison. It was self-defense. He shot her, and then he started shooting at me. I know the scene is still fresh, but eventually you’re going to find two nine millimeter rounds in the mattress, and six thirty-eights elsewhere. One of the thirty-eights just happened to plow through the top of the guy’s head.”

  “We’re going to sort it all out when you get back to New Orleans.”

  “I’m not turning myself in,” Wahlman said. “Not yet.”

  “You have to. The warrant’s out there. You’re a fugitive. You’re considered armed and dangerous. Every law enforcement officer in the country is going to know what you look like in a matter of hours. There’s nowhere to hide. Might as well make it easy on yourself.”

  Wahlman took a deep breath. “Did you get the DNA results back yet?” he asked.

  “Irrelevant.”

  “But did you?”

  “Yeah. But something’s wrong. We’re going to have to redo the whole thing.”

  “Some sort of mistake in the lab?”

  “Had to be,” Collins said. “Because according to the results, you and Darrell Renfro and Jack Reacher are all the same person.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “We’ll talk about it when you get to New Orleans. Right now you need to drive to the substation and turn yourself in.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then you’re in for a world of trouble, my friend.”

  “Talk to Babineaux,” Wahlman said.

  And then he hung up.

  He figured it was a good time to get rid of Allison’s cell phone. The whole lack of privacy thing was one of the reasons he didn’t own one. He didn’t like the fact that anyone with a computer could track his whereabouts twenty-four hours a day. The only reason he’d taken the phone in the first place was so he could keep trying to call Mike Chilton on the drive back to Florida.

  He reached for the doorknob to Mike’s master bedroom again.

  The phone trilled again.

  It wasn’t Detective Collins this time. It was Clifford Terrence Drake Junior.

  Wahlman clicked on. “I was going to call you later,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to do the research I need to do yet.”

  “There’s been a change of plans,” Drake said. “I’m going to give you an address in Jacksonville. I want you to go there and meet with one of my associates.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until—”

  “I’m going to switch over to a conference call. Don’t hang up, okay?”

  There was a series of clicks and a short period of static, and then a very familiar voice came on the line, a voice that was somehow hoarse and weary and frantic at the same time.

  It was the voice of Mike Chilton.

  “Rock, you need to run. Just run, man. Don’t worry about me. You need to get out of the country. Today. Get the cash out of my safety deposit box and—”

  Click.

  Silence.

  And then Drake came back on.

  He told Wahlman to be at the address in Jacksonville in exactly one hour.

  Or else.

  18

  Wahlman crossed the Buckman Bridge and exited on San Jose Boulevard. He had the .38 with him and the 9mm, minus the silencer, which he’d removed to make the gun easier to carry. Clifford Terrence Drake Junior had arranged for Mike Chilton to be kidnapped, which meant that Clifford Terrence Drake Junior was going to die. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon. That was for sure. As soon as Wahlman could get back to New Orleans, Drake was a dead man. In the meantime, anyone who worked for him was going to get a good old-fashioned Master-at-Arms ass kicking.

  At the very least.

  Wahlman sped through four yellow lights and one red one, took a right and covered several more blocks in a matter of seconds, driving the pickup like some kind of racecar, downshifting into the curves and flooring it on the straightaways, finally veering into an industrial loop and steering into the abandoned factory where the meeting was supposed to take place.

  He got there with about ten minutes to spare.

  He climbed out of the truck, stuffed both guns into the back of his waistband, covered the grips with the tails of his shirt. He was supposed to walk to the gate and press the big red button and wait for an escort. But that was not what he did. There were no rules in a situation like this, as far as Wahlman was concerned. His best friend had been abducted, and was being held against his will. All bets were off. No holds barred. So instead of pressing the button and waiting for someone to come, he climbed the fence and walked up a set of concrete steps to the loading dock and entered the factory through one of the big rollup doors, which had been left wide open.

  There was a guard standing about five feet inside the door. Average height, average weight, gray coveralls, black ball cap.

  Twelve-gauge pump.

  “You here to see Mr. Nefangar?” the man asked.

  “Maybe,” Wahlman said.

  “You were supposed to wait outside the gate.”

  “Yet here I am.”

  “I’m authorized to shoot you if you give me any trouble.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me. If you were going to shoot me, I’d be dead already. Take me to Nefangar.”

  “I was supposed to call him when you sounded the buzzer.”

  “So call him.”

  “You didn’t do what you were supposed to do.”

  “Want me to climb back over the fence and start over?” Wahlman asked.

  “You’re a smartass, you know that?”

  “Better than being a dumbass, like you.”

  The guard chuckled. “Just wait,” he said. “In less than an hour, you’re going to be begging me to shoot you. That’s how much pain you’re going to be in.”

  He leaned the shotgun against the wall, pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and punched in a number. While he was waiting for an answer, Wahlman reached around and pulled the .38 out of his waistband, aimed and fired and blew the guard’s right kneecap off. The cell phone skittered across the concrete floor as the guy collapsed in a screaming heap.r />
  Wahlman walked over and grabbed the shotgun, and then he picked up the phone and pressed it against his ear.

  “Anyone there?” he asked.

  “Who is this? McNeal? Was that a gunshot I just heard? Where are you? Where’s Wahlman?”

  “Who’s McNeal?” Wahlman asked. “The guy in the gray coveralls? I’m afraid he’s not feeling very well right now. Can I take a message?”

  “Wahlman?”

  “Nefanger?”

  “You just signed your friend’s execution order. I hope you know that.”

  “Let him go,” Wahlman said. “Drake doesn’t care anything about him. Drake wants me. For whatever reason. I really don’t even care anymore. If he’s determined to kill me, then he’s going to kill me. That’s the way it works in the real world. But I’m not going to turn myself over until I know that Mike is safe.”

  “You’re in no position to be making demands,” Nefangar said. “I’ll kill your friend, and then I’ll kill you.”

  “No you won’t. Because like I told McKneeless over there, if you’d wanted to kill me, then I never would have made it through the door. You want to keep me alive for some reason. For a while, anyway. It doesn’t really matter why, but I can promise you one thing: I’m going to keep doing a whole lot of damage until you let Mike Chilton go.”

  Nefangar laughed. “What kind of damage?” he asked.

  Wahlman walked over to McNeal, who now seemed to be in shock. Maybe from the blood loss, maybe from the excruciating pain. Maybe from both. Wahlman pressed the barrel of the shotgun against his chest.

  Wahlman had never shot a man at point blank range before.

  And he’d never shot an incapacitated man at any range.

  But then there was a first time for everything.

  “This kind of damage,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

  19

  Partially deafened from the blast, Wahlman stood there and fiddled with the phone until he figured out how to turn up the volume.

  “What did you do?” Nefangar asked.

  “I killed your sentry. Go ahead and send more. I’ll kill them too.”