by Diane Capri
“So you just hopped on a plane from Chicago this morning?” Kim demanded.
“Isn’t that what you did?” Now Neagley was heating up too.
Gaspar interrupted. “Are we getting anywhere with this?”
“Where is Dixon?” Kim pressed.
Neagley said, “I don’t know. It’s obvious she hasn’t been here. Do you know where she is?”
Gaspar said, “So we need to figure that out. Let’s sit, okay? I’m tired of standing.” He turned and walked into the dining room, pulled out a chair and waited.
Kim waved toward the archway and said, “After you.”
Neagley volunteered nothing, but she sat across from Gaspar and Kim took the chair at the head of the table. Silence. Gaspar assumed his usual waiting pose. He extended both legs, crossed at the ankles, slouched in the chair, folded his hands over his stomach and closed his eyes. “Let me know what you want me to do, Boss.”
Kim ignored him. Should she trust Neagley? She had no provable reason to distrust her, except that Neagley had been too close to Reacher once. Kim wasn’t comfortable with that, even if Reacher wasn’t orchestrating whatever was going on here. Which Kim still thought there was a better than decent chance he was.
“We were attacked in your office building last night,” Kim said.
Neagley’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“We were knocked out and drugged. When we regained consciousness, we were lying in the stairwell outside your office.”
“Do you have a suspect in custody?”
“We’re working on that,” she lied. No one was investigating the assault. Nor would they be. But Neagley didn’t need to know that. Kim wanted Neagley to be worried about being arrested, but if she was, she did a damn fine job of hiding the fact. “We’d like to see the surveillance video from the corridor and the stairwell outside your office.”
“So you don’t know who attacked you? Surely you don’t have so many enemies that you can’t name them, Agent Otto.” She’d amused herself there. “You’ll need to ask the building security. I’m not responsible for those common areas.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” Kim already knew she couldn’t get what she needed from building security. She’d tried. But she didn’t argue. Neagley’s refusal to cooperate was at least some evidence that she knew more than she let on.
Neagley said nothing.
“How long have you been waiting here for Dixon, Frances?” Gaspar asked without sitting up. He did open his eyes, though.
Neagley glared at him. “Don’t call me that. About an hour. I figured she went out for food or something and she’ll be back.”
“Did you ask Silver?”
Neagley narrowed her gaze in his direction, but Kim could feel the frigid response emanating from her when she said, “No.”
“Have you tried to call Dixon?”
“Of course. No answer.” Neagley pushed her chair back and stood.
Kim wanted to shake that cold confidence. She chose a different tack. “Is Dixon with Reacher?”
It worked. Neagley pushed her chair in and glared at her. “How would I know?” Then she turned and walked toward the exit. “When Dixon shows up, you can ask her.”
“Where are you going?” Kim asked.
“Chicago.”
Kim waited until she heard the front door close before she said, “Do you believe that?”
Gaspar shrugged, “Sure. She lives there. And her brother’s a mess.”
Kim would have punched him, but her arms were too short to reach him with enough force to matter. “There’s no chance in hell anyone stayed here overnight. Dixon’s bed hasn’t been slept in, her shower and sinks are dry. Maybe the toilet’s been flushed, but that could have been Neagley.”
Gaspar said, “Yet Neagley believed Dixon would meet her here or she wouldn’t have come. Which means Dixon did call Neagley and she was supposed to get home last night. Either she did get home and left again, or—”
“Or something, or someone, happened between her phone call to Neagley and now that sent her somewhere else.”
“Reacher?” Gaspar sighed. “You’re paranoid about that guy.”
“Maybe. But it’s not smart to ignore the common denominator.”
Gaspar shrugged. “So where is Dixon now?”
If she could use FBI resources, she’d be checking airline passenger manifests to be sure Dixon had actually arrived last night. She’d find the cab Dixon took from the airport. She’d watch surveillance video and pull Dixon’s phone records. And more. But those avenues were closed to her.
At the moment, her best choice was the private investigator who had been watching Dixon. He probably knew when and where she’d returned to New York. He might even know where she went when she deplaned and where she was now.
But Neagley would get to the investigator first and Neagley knew where to find him. Kim did not. She wasn’t about to go chasing Neagley around New York City or anywhere else. Besides, she’d had more than enough of Neagley for a while. The next time she saw Neagley, she wanted to arrest her for attacking two Federal agents. In her gut, Kim knew Neagley was the one.
In response to Gaspar’s question about Dixon’s whereabouts, Kim glanced at her watch. “Maybe we can get ahead of Neagley. Let’s stimulate Silver’s recall, shall we?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Saturday, November 13
2:17 p.m.
New York City
Colonel Silver’s security office was tiny, cramped, stifling, and smelled more than a bit ripe. Silver had pulled the surveillance video they’d requested and Kim scoured it as quickly as possible while she half-listened to Gaspar interview him. Kim occupied the only chair in the room. Gaspar and Silver stood in front of the door because there was nowhere else to stand. Kim hoped they wouldn’t need to exit quickly.
“You didn’t see Ms. Dixon at all, then?” Gaspar asked. Too gently, Kim thought, under the circumstances. They’d lost almost an hour upstairs with Neagley because they thought Dixon was here. Waste of time.
“She called from her cell phone and asked the night guy to send our car to Kennedy to pick her up at midnight. That’s in the log right here.” Silver pointed to the on-screen log reflecting Dixon’s request on the computer screen next to the video monitor. The call had come at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. She’d given him the flight number and airline. No indication of the departure city, but Kim could find that later. Pickup point was baggage claim, which meant Dixon had checked luggage, Silver said. Made sense, because she’d been gone almost a month.
“Is there an entry reflecting what time the driver got her back here?” Gaspar asked.
“We don’t keep track of that. Just the dispatch requests and the destination and the time the car is supposed to be at the pick-up.”
“What about the next pick-up after Dixon?” Gaspar asked. “Do you have that?
Silver pressed in next to Kim and flipped through a couple of pages on his computer monitor. “Looks like the car was done for the night after that. The next request was a pick-up at LaGuardia at 6:00 a.m. for another resident.”
“Where was the car between midnight and 6:00 a.m.?”
“He takes it home,” Silver said, stepping back by the door. Just as well, Kim thought. The man could stand an antiperspirant upgrade. “If we get another call, he’ll go directly from home, which saves time. It’s not a problem. We don’t have a big party crowd living here; people are mostly home by midnight.”
“What if Dixon didn’t show up when he went to get her?” Gaspar asked. “What would he do?”
“Wait a while, I’d guess. Maybe try to reach her on her cell phone. He might call back here to see if we’d heard anything. You could ask him yourself, but he took a resident upstate this morning. He won’t return until tomorrow.”
“Unless we ask him to,” Gaspar said, sternly.
“Right,” Silver agreed. “Want me to call him and find out when he’ll be back in the city? Just in
case?”
Kim had gone back to the surveillance video. “It’s not that important right now,” she said without looking up from the screen. “We can follow up tomorrow if we need to. Don’t bother him while he’s on the road. Can you print that page of the log sheet for us so we’ll have the flight information?”
“Sure. Anything else?”
Kim paused the video feed and turned around to face him. “Can you give me a copy of the video of these two visitors?”
Silver peered at the screen. “No problem. I can download it for you right now if you want.”
“Please. I’ll wait.” Kim tapped the screen. “Did you see this woman’s face when these two were here?”
Silver’s eyes narrowed. His voice lowered and slowed. “Yes.”
“What did she look like?”
He hesitated, as if the information was too personal to share. Quietly, he said, “Like she’d been on the losing end of a knife fight a few years ago.”
“A knife fight?” Gaspar said, as if he hadn’t considered the idea before now. But he should have. Knife fights had to be fairly common in Miami. Kim should have recognized the scars, too. They were common enough in Detroit.
Silver said, “A pretty nasty one, too, it looked like. Scars were bad, even under her makeup. A couple of keloid bumps. Dark lines.” He swiped his palm across his sweaty face. “I felt sorry for her. She might have been a good-looking woman before that happened.”
The room was quiet while they all considered what a woman’s face, scarred and disfigured, might mean. Who would cut her like that? Why? And what might she do for revenge? Because the horrible scars they could see on her face were probably nothing compared to the wounds she carried on her psyche.
After a suitable time, Kim asked, “And what about him? Did you notice anything unusual about her companion?”
Silver bowed his head a moment. When he looked up, Kim noticed his eyes were glassy, as if the old soldier battled past emotions still. “At the time, I wasn’t paying much attention to him because of her face, you know?”
Gaspar nodded. “I’m sure,” he said, encouragingly.
“He walked . . . funny. That’s what I noticed. Stiff. Jerky. I didn’t connect his walk in my mind then.” Silver stopped, cleared his throat, blinked. “But now I know he must have been a double amputee. I saw too many young men under my command end up like that, honestly.” The old soldier pressed both closed eyelids with a gnarled left paw.
After giving Silver a moment to compose himself, Gaspar, absently rubbing his right side, said, “Thank you, Colonel. We appreciate it.”
Kim got out of the man’s way so he could squeeze himself in before the monitors, then handed him her flash drive. After a silent moment, Silver pulled the drive and handed it back to her. “Here you go. The video and the log, too. Maybe they’ll help you find Ms. Dixon. I’ve known her a long time. She’s an army vet, too, you know. Served with her. That’s how I got this job. She was a fine soldier. Now you’ve got me worried about her.”
What? What did he say? Kim felt like she’d been whacked with the stupid stick. How could she have missed that? “You served with Dixon in the Army?”
“That’s right. Briefly,” he said. A smile lifted his mouth in the way of an accomplished man reliving the glory days.
“Serve with Dave O’Donnell, too?” Gaspar asked.
“I knew him. He was around a while. Not as long as me, but long enough.”
“How about Frances Neagley?” Kim asked.
His smile faded. He shifted against the door. “She wasn’t an officer, but yes, I knew Neagley.”
“You saw her today, then?” Kim asked.
“Yes.”
“And you saw her earlier in the week, too?”
“Yes.”
“Did you talk with her?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Gaspar asked this time. It was a question Kim would not have uttered because the answer seemed obvious to her.
Silver seemed startled, too. “Neagley is . . . not a friendly person. She didn’t stop to chat.”
Kim nodded. She wondered briefly what had happened to his scarred left hand now. Silver had a good bead on Neagley, all right.
Kim took a deep breath. “Did you know Major Jack Reacher?”
Silver’s lips all but disappeared in the hard, grim line. After a while, he filled the silence. “I’m sure you already know more about Neagley and Reacher than I do.”
“When did you see Reacher last?” Gaspar asked.
“Just before the Army knocked him down to captain,” Silver said. “He’s damn lucky he’s not in Leavenworth. Too bad, since you’re looking for him. He’d be a lot easier to find if they’d put him behind bars where he belonged. Neagley, too, as far as I’m concerned. There’s something not right about her. Watch your backs.”
Kim said, “Reacher’s never been here to visit Dixon?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Silver said. “I never asked her. But I’ve been here ten years and I haven’t seen him.” Silver’s growl now was hard and strong and it was easy to believe he’d been a warrior once. “With any luck, I’ll never see Jack Reacher again. If you can make that happen, you’re better at your job than we were.”
“What did Reacher do?”
“What didn’t he do? That’s all I’m going to say. There’s files. You can read all about it. I’ve got work to do,” Silver said.
Gaspar said, “And Neagley?”
He bristled again. Chose his words too carefully. “As far as I know, she and Ms. Dixon are not friends.”
“Why do you say that?” Kim asked.
Silver hesitated again. Then he said, “Neagley isn’t the kind of woman who has friends. Let’s just put it that way.”
“Weren’t she and Reacher friends?” Kim asked.
This time, Silver’s silence lasted a good while longer.
A loud rap on the security office door caused Gaspar to jump aside. A man pushed the door open a crack and Kim felt a rush of welcome cool air from the hallway.
The guy stuck his head in. “Silver, are you coming back? I’ve got to go, man. Your break’s been over for twenty minutes.”
Silver said, “Of course. I’m sorry. I’m coming now.” The man left and Silver said, “I can’t leave you in here unsupervised.”
“Okay,” Kim said. “We’ve got everything we need for now. Thanks for helping us, Colonel.”
She and Gaspar exited the room and Silver locked the door. They walked toward the exit together. He extended his good right hand and Gaspar shook. Kim did the same. “We’ll let you know when we find out anything about Ms. Dixon.”
“Thank you,” he said, turning to leave.
“Colonel Silver?” Kim said.
“Yes?” He put his public smile back in place.
“Were they friends or not?” Kim asked. “Reacher and Neagley?”
His tone hardened enough to break steel. “All due respect, this is the last thing I’m going to say on the subject. They were co-dependent psychos. And my money says that’s what they still are. You want to be very careful if that’s where you’re headed. Ma’am.”
Silver left them standing in the hallway outside the security room door wondering what the hell Reacher had done in the Army to have lingered so long with the old warrior.
“Is that where we’re headed, Ma’am?” Gaspar asked, mocking to lighten the mood, probably.
Kim said, “I’m open to any better ideas you’ve got. Right now, I want to look at this video and find that PI, don’t you?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Saturday, November 13
3:56 p.m.
New York City
“So we watch the video, we find the investigator and talk to him, and then we get a bite to eat,” Gaspar said.
“I guess.”
“Once we’re done with him, we can be done for tonight. If we stop now, I won’t be interested in talking to this idiot at all.”
“You’re interested now, Chico?” Kim smiled, teasing him. She’d had even less sleep than he, and flying was always exhausting. She’d be as glad to call it a night as he was.
“Not really. But I know you won’t quit until we do. So let’s just get it over with. Unless the PI runs again. And if he does, this time don’t chase him, okay?”
“What makes you think he’ll be in his office?” Kim asked.
“Neagley just texted me the address. She said he wouldn’t leave before we arrive.”
“Seriously?”
He showed her the text.
They grabbed a cab. Ten minutes later, they were riding up in yet another elevator to another office, this time on the sixth floor. They walked down a dingy corridor to the very end, where an old-fashioned, half-frosted glass, half-wood door marked the office entrance. Gaspar turned the knob. The door was locked. He rapped hard on the scarred wood framing the frosted glass. A moment later, Neagley pulled the door open and stepped back inside.
They entered an office that might have served as a set for an ancient Humphrey Bogart film. Sam Spade surely worked in such a place in the last century. A single room, a battered desk, a thirty-inch door with frosted glass on top directly across from where they stood.
The place was trashed. Top to bottom, side to side. Not a single pencil was where it should have been. Given the size of the room, the search and destroy was completed in maybe five minutes. Ten max. Whatever they’d been looking for, Kim figured they hadn’t found it. The entire room was destroyed. If they’d found what they came for, they’d have stopped searching while at least something remained intact.
“What took you so long?” Neagley asked when she’d reclosed the door.
“We thought you were going to Chicago,” Kim said.
Neagley ignored the comment and replied, “I’ve got something to show you. Come on.”
They followed her through the door into a tiny workspace smaller than Silver’s security room. Again, someone had conducted a quick and very dirty search that left the room looking like an explosion’s aftermath. A grimy window, a smaller, battered desk. The desk’s top was adorned by gouged and scraped wood and dried brown blood, much of it obscured by the top half of the investigator’s dead body, still dressed in his messenger outfit.