Killing Floor (17 page)

“I panicked this morning,” she said. “That’s not really like me at all. I must have given you a very bad impression, I’m afraid. After you left, I calmed down and thought things out. I came to the same conclusion you’ve just described. Hub’s blundered into something and he’s got all tangled up in it. So what am I going to do about it? Well, I’m going to stop panicking and start thinking. I’ve been a mess since Friday and I’m ashamed of it. That’s not the real me at all. So I did something, and I hope you’ll forgive me for it?”

“Go on,” I said.

“I called Dwight Stevenson,” she said. “He had mentioned he had seen a fax from the Pentagon about your service as a military policeman. I asked him to find it and read it to me. I thought it was an excellent record.”

She smiled at me. Hitched her chair in closer.

“So what I want to do is to hire you,” she said. “I want to hire you in a private capacity to solve my husband’s problem. Would you consider doing that for me?”

“No,” I said. “I can’t do that, Charlie.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she said.

“There would be a sort of a conflict of interest,” I said. “It might mean I couldn’t do a proper job for you.”

“A conflict?” she said. “In what way?”

I paused for a long moment. Tried to figure out how to explain it.

“Your husband felt bad, OK?” I said. “He got hold of some kind of an investigator, a government guy, and they were trying to fix the situation. But the government guy got killed. And I’m afraid my interest is in the government guy, more than your husband.”

She followed what I was saying and nodded.

“But why?” she asked. “You don’t work for the government.”

“The government guy was my brother,” I told her. “Just a crazy coincidence, I know, but I’m stuck with it.”

She went quiet. She saw where the conflict could lie.

“I’m very sorry,” she said. “You’re not saying Hub betrayed your brother?”

“No,” I said. “That’s the very last thing he would have done. He was depending on him to get him out from under. Something went wrong, is all.”

“May I ask you a question?” she said. “Why do you refer to my husband in the past tense?”

I looked straight at her.

“Because he’s dead,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”

Charlie hung in there. She went pale and clenched her hands until her knuckles shone waxy white. But she didn’t fall apart.

“I don’t think he’s dead,” she whispered. “I would know. I would be able to feel it. I think he’s just hiding out somewhere. I want you to find him. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

I just slowly shook my head at her.

“Please,” she said.

“I won’t do it, Charlie,” I said. “I won’t take your money for that. I would be exploiting you. I can’t take your money because I know he’s already dead. I’m very sorry, but there it is.”

There was a long silence in the kitchen. I sat there at the table, nursing the coffee she’d made for me.

“Would you do it if I didn’t pay you?” she said. “Maybe you could just look around for him while you find out about your brother?”

I thought about it. Couldn’t see how I could say no to that.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll do that, Charlie. But like I say, don’t expect miracles. I think we’re looking at something very bad here.”

“I think he’s alive,” she said. “I would know if he wasn’t.”

I started worrying about what would happen when his body was found. She was going to come face to face with reality the same way a runaway truck comes face to face with the side of a building.

“You’ll need expense money,” Charlie said.

I wasn’t sure about taking it, but she passed me a thick envelope.

“Will that do?” she asked.

I looked in the envelope. There was a thick wad of hundred dollar bills in there. I nodded. That would do.

“And please keep the car,” she said. “Use it as long as you need it.”

I nodded again. Thought about what else I needed to say and forced myself to use the present tense.

“Where does he work?” I asked her.

“Sunrise International,” she said. “It’s a bank.”

She reeled off an Atlanta address.

“OK, Charlie,” I said. “Now let me ask you something else. It’s very important. Did your husband ever use the word ‘Pluribus’?”

She thought about it and shrugged.

“Pluribus?” she said. “Isn’t that something to do with politics? Like on the podium when the president gives a speech? I never heard Hub talking about it. He graduated in banking studies.”

“You never heard him use that word?” I asked her again. “Not on the phone, not in his sleep or anything?”

“Never,” she said.

“What about next Sunday?” I asked her. “Did he mention next Sunday? Anything about what’s going to happen?”

“Next Sunday?” she repeated. “I don’t think he mentioned it. Why? What’s going to happen next Sunday?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

She pondered it again for a long moment, but just shook her head and shrugged, palms upward, like it meant nothing to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Now you’ve got to do something.”

“What do I have to do?” she said.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” I said.

Her knuckles were still white, but she was staying in control.

“I’ve got to run and hide?” she said. “But where to?”

“An FBI agent is coming here to pick you up,” I said.

She stared at me in panic.

“FBI?” she said. She went paler still. “This is really serious, isn’t it?”

“It’s deadly serious,” I said. “You need to get ready to leave right now.”

“OK,” she said, slowly. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

I WALKED OUT OF HER KITCHEN AND INTO THE GARDEN
room where we had drunk iced tea the day before. Stepped through the French doors and strolled a slow circuit outside the house. Down the driveway, through the banks of greenery, out onto Beckman Drive. Leaned up on the white mailbox on the shoulder. It was silent. I could hear nothing at all except the dry rustle of the grass cooling under my feet.

Then I could hear a car coming west out of town. It slowed just before the crest of the rise and I heard the automatic box slur a change down as the speed dropped. The car rose up over the crest into view. It was a brown Buick, very plain, two guys in it. They were small dark guys, Hispanic, loud shirts. They were slowing, drifting to the left of the road, looking for the Hubble mailbox. I was leaning on the Hubble mailbox, looking at them. Their eyes met mine. The car accelerated again and swerved away. Blasted on into the empty peach country. I stepped out and watched them go. I saw a dust plume rising as they drove off Margrave’s immaculate blacktop onto the dusty rural roadway. Then I sprinted back up to the house. I wanted Charlie to hurry.

She was inside, flustered, chattering away like a kid going on vacation. Making lists out loud. Some kind of a mechanism to burn off the panic she was feeling. On Friday she’d been a rich idle woman married to a banker. Now on Monday a stranger who said the banker was dead was telling her to hurry up and run for her life.

“Take the mobile phone with you,” I called to her.

She didn’t reply. I just heard a worried silence. Footsteps and closet doors banging. I sat in her kitchen with the rest of the coffee for most of an hour. Then I heard a car horn blow and the crunch of heavy steps on the gravel. A loud knock on the front door. I put my hand in my pocket and closed it around the ebony handle of Morrison’s switchblade. Walked out into the hallway and opened up.

There was a neat blue sedan next to the Bentley and a gigantic black guy standing back from the doorstep. He was as tall as me, maybe even taller, but he must have outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds. Must have been three ten, three twenty. Next to him, I was a featherweight. He stepped forward with the easy elastic grace of an athlete.

“Reacher?” the giant said. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Picard, FBI.”

He shook hands with me. He was enormous. He had a casual competence about him which made me glad he was on my side. He looked like my type of a guy. Like he could be very useful in a tight corner. I suddenly felt a flood of encouragement. I stood aside to let him into Charlie’s house.

“OK,” Picard said to me. “I got all the details from Finlay. Real sorry about your brother, my friend. Real sorry. Somewhere we can talk?”

I led him through to the kitchen. He loped beside me and covered the distance in a couple of strides. Glanced around and poured himself the dregs of the stewed coffee. Then he stepped over next to me and dropped his hand on my shoulder. Felt like somebody had hit me with a bag of cement.

“Ground rules,” he said. “This whole thing is off the record, right?”

I nodded. His voice matched his bulk. It was a low rumble. It was what a brown bear would sound like if it learned to talk. I couldn’t tell how old the guy was. He was one of those big fit men whose peak years stretch on for decades. He nodded and moved away. Rested his giant frame against the counter.

“This is a huge problem for me,” he said. “Bureau can’t act without a call from the responsible official in the local jurisdiction. That would be this guy Teale, right? And from what Finlay tells me, I assume old Teale’s not going to be making that call. So I could end up with my big ass in a sling for this. But I’ll bend the rules for Finlay. We go back quite a ways. But you got to remember, this is all unofficial, OK?”

I nodded again. I was happy with that. Very happy. Unofficial help suited me fine. It would get the job done without hanging me up on procedure. I had five clear days before Sunday. This morning, five days had seemed more than generous. But now, with Hubble gone, I felt like I was very short of time. Much too short of time to waste any of it on procedure.

“Where are you going to put them?” I asked him.

“Safe house up in Atlanta,” Picard said. “Bureau place, we’ve had it for years. They’ll be secure there, but I’m not going to say exactly where it is, and I’m going to have to ask you not to press Mrs. Hubble about it afterward, OK? I got to watch my back on this thing. I blow a safe house, I’m in really deep shit.”

“OK, Picard,” I said. “I won’t cause you any problems. And I appreciate it.”

He nodded, gravely, like he was way out on a limb. Then Charlie and the kids burst in. They were burdened down with badly packed bags. Picard introduced himself. I could see that Charlie’s daughter was terrified by the size of the guy.

The little boy’s eyes grew round as he gazed at the FBI Special Agent’s shield Picard was holding out. Then the five of us carried the bags outside and piled them in the blue sedan’s trunk. I shook hands with Picard and Charlie. Then they all got in the car. Picard drove them away. I waved after them.

15

I HEADED OVER TO WARBURTON A DAMN SIGHT FASTER
than the prison driver had and I was there in less than fifty minutes. It was a hell of a sight. There was a storm coming in quickly from the west and shafts of low afternoon sun were escaping the clouds and hitting the place. The glittering metal towers and turrets were catching the orange rays. I slowed up and pulled into the prison approach. Stopped outside the first vehicle cage. I wasn’t going in there. I’d had enough of that. Spivey was going to have to come out to me. I got out of the Bentley and walked over to the guard. He seemed friendly enough.

“Spivey on duty?” I asked him.

“You want him?” the guard said.

“Tell him Mr. Reacher’s here,” I said.

The guy ducked under a Perspex hood and made a call. Ducked back out again and shouted over to me.

“He doesn’t know any Mr. Reacher,” he said.

“Tell him Chief Morrison sent me,” I said. “Over from Margrave.”

The guy went under the Perspex thing again and started talking. After a minute he was back out.

“OK, drive on through,” he said. “Spivey will meet you at reception.”

“Tell him he’s got to come out here,” I said. “Meet me on the road.”

I walked away and stood in the dust on the edge of the blacktop. It was a battle of nerves. I was betting Spivey would come on out. I’d know in five minutes. I waited. I could smell rain coming out of the west. In an hour, it was going to roll right over us. I stood and waited.

Spivey came out. I heard the grilles on the vehicle cage grinding across. I turned and saw a dirty Ford driving through. It came out and stopped next to the Bentley. Spivey heaved himself out. He walked over. Big guy, sweating, red face and hands. His uniform was dirty.

“Remember me?” I asked him.

His small snake eyes flicked around. He was adrift and worried.

“You’re Reacher,” he said. “So what?”

“Right,” I said. “I’m Reacher. From Friday. What was the deal?”

He shifted from foot to foot. He was going to play hard to get. But he’d already showed his hand. He’d come out to meet me. He’d already lost the game. But he didn’t speak.

“What was the deal on Friday?” I said again.

“Morrison is dead,” he said. Then he shrugged and clamped his thin lips. Wouldn’t say any more.

I stepped casually to my left. Just a foot or so, to put Spivey’s bulk between me and the gate guard. So the gate guard couldn’t see. Morrison’s switchblade appeared in my hand. I held it up at Spivey’s eye level for a second. Just long enough for him to read the gold-filled engraving in the ebony. Then the blade popped out with a loud click. Spivey’s small eyes were fixed on it.

“You think I used this on Morrison?” I said.

He was staring at the blade. It shone blue in the stormy sun.

“It wasn’t you,” he said. “But maybe you had good reason.”

I smiled at him. He knew it wasn’t me who killed Morrison. Therefore he knew who had. Therefore he knew who Morrison’s bosses were. Simple as that. Three little words, and I was getting somewhere. I moved the blade a fraction closer to his big red face.

“Want me to use this on you?” I said.

Spivey looked around wildly. Saw the gate guard thirty yards away.

“He’s not going to help you,” I said. “He hates your useless fat guts. He’s just a guard. You sucked ass and got promotion. He wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. Why should he?”

“So what do you want?” Spivey said.

“Friday,” I said. “What was the deal?”

“And if I tell you?” he said.

I shrugged at him.

“Depends what you tell me,” I said. “You tell me the truth, I’ll let you go back inside. Want to tell me the truth?”

He didn’t reply. We were just standing there by the road. A battle of nerves. His nerves were shot to hell. So he was losing. His little eyes were darting about. They always came back to the blade.

“OK, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Time to time, I helped Morrison out. He called me Friday. Said he was sending two guys over. Names meant nothing to me. Never heard of you or the other guy. I was supposed to get the Hubble guy killed. That’s all. Nothing was supposed to happen to you, I swear it.”

“So what went wrong?” I asked him.

“My guys screwed up,” he said. “That’s all, I swear it. It was the other guy we were after. Nothing was supposed to happen to you. You got out of there, right? No damage done, right? So why give me a hard time?”

I flashed the blade up real quick and nicked his chin. He froze in shock. A moment later a fat worm of dark blood welled out of the cut.

“What was the reason?” I asked him.

“There’s never a reason,” he said. “I just do what I’m told.”

“You do what you’re told?” I said.

“I do what I’m told,” he said again. “I don’t want to know any reasons.”

“So who told you what to do?” I said.

“Morrison,” he said. “Morrison told me what to do.”

“And who told Morrison what to do?” I asked him.

I held the blade an inch from his cheek. He was just about whimpering with fear. I stared into his small snake eyes. He knew the answer. I could see that, far back in those eyes. He knew who told Morrison what to do.

“Who told him what to do?” I asked him again.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I swear it, grave of my mother.”

I stared at him for a long moment. Shook my head.

“Wrong, Spivey,” I said. “You do know. You’re going to tell me.”

Now Spivey shook his head. His big red face jerked from side to side. The blood was running down his chin onto his slabby jowls.

“They’ll kill me if I do,” he said.

I flicked the knife at his belly. Slit his greasy shirt.

“I’ll kill you if you don’t,” I said.

Guy like Spivey, he thinks short term. If he told me, he’d die tomorrow. If he didn’t tell me, he’d die today. That’s how he thought. Short term. So he set about telling me. His throat started working up and down, like it was too dry to speak. I stared into his eyes. He couldn’t get any words out. He was like a guy in a movie who crawls up a desert dune and tries to call for water. But he was going to tell me.

Then he wasn’t. Over his shoulder, I saw a dust plume far in the east. Then I heard the faint roar of a diesel engine. Then I made out the gray shape of the prison bus rolling in. Spivey snapped his head around to look at his salvation. The gate guard wandered out to meet the bus. Spivey snapped his head back to look at me. There was a mean gleam of triumph in his eyes. The bus was getting closer.

“Who was it, Spivey?” I said. “Tell me now, or I’ll come back for you.”

But he just backed off and turned and hustled over to his dirty Ford. The bus roared in and blew dust all over me. I closed up the switchblade and put it back in my pocket. Jogged over to the Bentley and took off.

THE COMING STORM CHASED ME ALL THE WAY BACK EAST
. I felt I had more than a storm after me. I was sick with frustration. This morning I had been just one conversation away from knowing everything. Now I knew nothing. The situation had suddenly turned sour.

I had no backup, no facilities, no help. I couldn’t rely on Roscoe or Finlay. I couldn’t expect either of them to agree with my agenda. And they had troubles of their own up at the station house. What had Finlay said? Working under the enemy’s nose? And I couldn’t expect too much from Picard. He was already way out on a limb. I couldn’t count on anybody but myself.

On the other hand, I had no laws to worry about, no inhibitions, no distractions. I wouldn’t have to think about Miranda, probable cause, constitutional rights. I wouldn’t have to think about reasonable doubt or rules of evidence. No appeal to any higher authority for these guys. Was that fair? You bet your ass. These were bad people. They’d stepped over the line a long time ago. Bad people. What had Finlay said? As bad as they come. And they had killed Joe Reacher.

I rolled the Bentley down the slight hill to Roscoe’s house. Parked on the road outside her place. She wasn’t home. The Chevrolet wasn’t there. The big chrome clock on the Bentley’s dash showed ten of six. Ten minutes to wait. I got out of the front seat and got into the back. Stretched out on the big old car’s leather bench.

I wanted to get away from Margrave for the evening. I wanted to get out of Georgia altogether. I found a map in a pocket on the back of the driver’s seat. I peered at it and figured if we went west for an hour, hour and a half, back past Warburton again, we’d cross the state line into Alabama. That’s what I wanted to do. Blast west with Roscoe into Alabama and pull into the first live music bar we came to. Put my troubles on hold until tomorrow. Eat some cheap food, drink some cold beer, hear some dirty music. With Roscoe. My idea of a hell of an evening. I settled back to wait for her. The dark was gathering in. I felt a faint chill in the evening air. About six o’clock huge drops started hammering on the roof of the Bentley. It felt like a big evening thunderstorm was moving in, but it never really arrived. It never really let loose. Just the big early drops spattering down like the sky was straining to unload but wouldn’t let go. It went very dark and the heavy car rocked gently in the damp wind.

ROSCOE WAS LATE. THE STORM HAD BEEN THREATENING FOR
about twenty minutes before I saw her Chevy winding down the rise. Her headlights swept and arced left and right. They washed over me as she swung into her driveway. They blazed against her garage door, then died as she cut the power. I got out of the Bentley and stepped over to her. We held each other and kissed. Then we went inside.

“You OK?” I asked her.

“I guess,” she said. “Hell of a day.”

I nodded. It had been.

“Upset?” I asked her.

She was moving around switching lamps on. Pulling drapes.

“This morning was the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “By far the worst thing. But I’m going to tell you something I would never tell anyone else. I wasn’t upset. Not about Morrison. You can’t get upset about a guy like that. But I’m upset about his wife. Bad enough living with a guy like Morrison without dying because of him too, right?”

“What about the rest of it?” I asked her. “Teale?”

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “That whole family has been scum for two hundred years. I know all about them. His family and my family go way back together. Why should he be any different? But, God, I’m glad everybody else in the department turned out clean. I was dreading finding out one of those guys had been in it, too. I don’t know if I could have faced that.”

She went into the kitchen and I followed. She went quiet. She wasn’t falling apart, but she wasn’t happy. She pulled open the refrigerator door. It was a gesture which said: the cupboard is bare. She smiled a tired smile at me.

“You want to buy me dinner?” she said.

“Sure,” I said. “But not here. In Alabama.”

I told her what I wanted to do. She liked the plan. She brightened up and went to take a shower. I figured I could use a shower too, so I went with her. But we hit a delay because as soon as she started to unbutton her crisp uniform shirt, my priorities shifted. The lure of an Alabama bar receded. And the shower could wait, too. She was wearing black underwear beneath the uniform. Not very substantial items. We ended up in a frenzy on the bedroom floor. The thunderstorm was finally breaking outside. The rain was lashing the little house. Lightning was blazing and the thunder was crashing about.

We finally made it to the shower. By then, we really needed it. Afterward I lay on the bed while Roscoe dressed. She put on faded denims and a silky shirt. We turned off the lamps again and locked up and took off in the Bentley. It was seven thirty and the storm was drifting off to the east, heading for Charleston before boiling out over the Atlantic. Might hit Bermuda tomorrow. We headed west toward a pinker sky. I found the road back out to Warburton. Cruised down the farm roads between the endless dark fields and blasted past the prison. It squatted glowering in its ghastly yellow light.

A half hour after Warburton we stopped to fill the old car’s gigantic tank. Threaded through some tobacco country and crossed the Chattahoochee by an old river bridge in Franklin. Then a sprint down to the state line. We were in Alabama before nine o’clock. We agreed to take a chance and stop at the first bar.

We saw an old roadhouse maybe a mile later. Pulled into the parking lot and got out. Looked OK. Big enough place, wide and low, built from tarred boards. Plenty of neon, plenty of cars in the lot, and I could hear music. The sign at the door said The Pond, live music seven nights a week at nine thirty. Roscoe and I held hands and walked in.

We were hit by bar noise and jukebox music and a blast of beery air. We pushed through to the back and found a wide ring of booths around a dance floor with a stage beyond. The stage was really just a low concrete platform. It might once have been some kind of a loading bay. The ceiling was low and the light was dim. We found an empty booth and slid in. Watched the band setting up while we waited for service. The waitresses were rushing around like basketball centers. One dived over and we ordered beers, cheese-burgers, fries, onion rings. Pretty much right away she ran back with a tin tray with our stuff on it. We ate and drank and ordered more.

“So what are you going to do about Joe?” Roscoe asked me.

I was going to finish his business. Whatever it was. Whatever it took. That was the decision I had made in her warm bed that morning. But she was a police officer. She was sworn to uphold all kinds of laws. Laws that were designed to get in my way. I didn’t know what to say. But she didn’t wait for me to say anything.

“I think you should find out who it was killed him,” she said.

“And then what?” I asked her.

But that was as far as we got. The band started up. We couldn’t talk anymore. Roscoe gave an apologetic smile and shook her head. The band was loud. She shrugged, saying sorry for the fact that I couldn’t hear her talking. She sketched me a tell-you-later gesture across the table and we turned to face the stage. I wished I could have heard her reply to my question.