Die Trying (12 page)

The tech exited to a color palette.

“Show me,” he said.

Milosevic pointed to a particular shade.

“More like that,” he said.

They ran the test again. The hard disk chattered and the laser printer whirred.

“That's better,” Milosevic said. “Dress is right. Hair color is better as well.”

“OK,” the tech said. He saved all the parameters to disk. “Let's go to work here.”

The FBI never uses latest-generation equipment. The feeling is it's better to use stuff that has been proven in the field. So the tech chief's computer was actually a little slower than the computers in the rich kids' bedrooms up and down the North Shore. But not much slower. It gave McGrath five prints within forty minutes. Four mug shots of the four kidnappers, and a close-up side view of the front half of their car. All in glowing color, all with the grain enhanced and smoothed away. McGrath thought they were the best damn pictures he had ever seen.

“Thanks, chief,” he said. “These are brilliant. Best work anybody has done around here for a long time. But don't say a word. Big secret, right?”

He clapped the tech on the shoulder and left him feeling like the most important guy in the whole building.

 

THE SIX WOMEN worked hard and finished just before their two hours were up. The tiny cracks between the boards were their biggest problem. The cracks were tight, but not tight enough to stop the blood seeping in. But they were too tight to get a brush down in there. They had to sluice them out with water and rag them dry. The boards were turning a wet brown color. The women were praying they wouldn't warp as they dried. Two of them were throwing up. It was adding to their workload. But they finished in time for the commander's inspection. They stood rigidly at attention on the damp floor and waited. He checked everywhere, with the wet boards creaking under his bulk. But he was satisfied with their work and gave them another two hours to clean the smears off the corridor and the staircase, where the body had been dragged away.

 

THE CAR WAS easy. It was quickly identified as a Lexus. Four-door. Late-model. The pattern of the alloy wheel dated it exactly. Color was either black or dark gray. Impossible to be certain. The computer process was good, but not good enough to be definitive about dark automotive paint standing in bright sunshine.

“Stolen?” Milosevic said.

McGrath nodded.

“Almost certainly,” he said. “You do the checking, OK?”

Fluctuations in the value of the yen had put the list price of a new Lexus four-door somewhere up there with Milosevic's annual salary, so he knew which jurisdictions were worth checking with and which weren't. He didn't bother with anywhere south of the Loop. He put in calls to the Chicago cops, and then all the departments on the North Shore right up to Lake Forest.

He got a hit just before noon. Not exactly what he was looking for. Not a stolen Lexus. But a missing Lexus. The police department in Wilmette came back to him and said a dentist up there had driven his brand-new Lexus to work, before seven on Monday morning, and parked it in the lot behind his professional building. A chiropractor from the next office suite had seen him turn into the lot. But the dentist had never made it into the building. His nurse had called his home and his wife had called the Wilmette PD. The cops had taken the report and sat on it. It wasn't the first case of a husband disappearing they'd ever heard of. They told Milosevic the guy's name was Rubin and the car was the new shade of black, mica flecks in the paint to make it sparkle, and it had vanity plates reading: ORTHO 1.

Milosevic put the phone down on that call and it rang again straightaway with a report from the Chicago Fire Department. A unit had attended an automobile fire which was putting up a cloud of oily smoke into the land-side flight path into Meigs Field Airport. The fire truck had arrived in an abandoned industrial lot just before one o'clock Monday and found a black Lexus burning fiercely. They had figured it was burned to the metal anyway, not much more smoke to come, so they had saved their foam and just left it to burn out. Milosevic copied the location and hung up. Ducked into McGrath's office for instructions.

“Check it out,” McGrath told him.

Milosevic nodded. He was always happy with road work. It gave him the chance to drive his own brand-new Ford Explorer, which he liked to use in preference to one of the Bureau's clunky sedans. And the Bureau liked to let him do exactly that, because he never bothered to claim for his personal gas. So he drove the big shiny four-wheel-drive five miles south and found the wreck of the Lexus, no trouble at all. It was parked at an angle on a lumpy concrete area behind an abandoned industrial building. The tires had burned away and it was settled on the rims. The plates were still readable: ORTHO 1. He poked through the drifts of ash inside, still slightly warm, and then he pulled the shaft of the burned key from the ignition and popped the trunk. Then he staggered four steps away and threw up on the concrete. He retched and spat and sweated. He pulled his cellular phone from his pocket and fired it up. Got straight through to McGrath in the Federal Building.

“I found the dentist,” he said.

“Where?” McGrath asked.

“In the damn trunk,” Milosevic said. “Slow-roasted. Looks like he was alive when the fire started.”

“Christ,” McGrath said. “Is it connected?”

“No doubt about that,” he said.

“You sure?” McGrath asked him.

“No doubt about it,” Milosevic said again. “I found other stuff. Burned, but it's all pretty clear. There's a thirty-eight right in the middle of what looks like a metal hinge, could be from a woman's pocketbook, right? Coins, and a lipstick tube, and the metal parts from a mobile phone and a pager. And there are nine wire hangers on the floor. Like you get from a dry cleaner?”

“Christ,” McGrath said again. “Conclusions?”

“They stole the Lexus up in Wilmette,” Milosevic said.

“Maybe the dentist guy disturbed them in the act. So he went for them and they overpowered him and put him in the trunk. Burned him along with the rest of the evidence.”

“Shit,” McGrath said. “But where's Holly? Conclusions on that?”

“They took her to Meigs Field,” Milosevic said. “It's about a half-mile away. They put her in a private plane and dumped the car right here. That's what they did, Mack. They flew her out somewhere. Four guys, capable of burning another guy up while he was still alive, they've got her alone somewhere, could be a million miles away from here by now.”

15

THE WHITE TRUCK droned on, steadily, another hour, maybe sixty more miles. The clock inside Reacher's head ticked around from eleven to twelve noon. The first faint stirrings of worry were building inside him. They had been gone a day. Nearly a full twenty-four hours. Out of the first phase, into the middle phase. No progress. And he was uncomfortable. The air inside the vehicle was about as hot as air could get. They were still lying flat on their backs on the hot mattress, heads together. The horsehair padding was overheating them. Holly's dark hair was damp and spread out. On her left, it was curled against Reacher's bare shoulder.

“Is it because I'm a woman?” she asked. Tense. “Or because I'm younger than you? Or both?”

“Is what because?” he asked back. Wary.

“You think you've got to take care of me,” she said. “You're worrying about me, because I'm young and a woman, right? You think I need some older man's help.”

Reacher stirred. He didn't really want to move. He wasn't comfortable, but he guessed he was happy enough where he was. In particular, he was happy with the feel of Holly's hair against his shoulder. His life was like that. Whatever happened, there were always some little compensations available.

“Well?” she asked.

“It's not a gender thing, Holly,” he said. “Or an age thing. But you do need help, right?”

“And I'm a younger woman and you're an older man,” she said. “Therefore obviously you're the one qualified to give it. Couldn't be the other way around, right?”

Reacher shook his head, lying down.

“It's not a gender thing,” he said again. “Or an age thing. I'm qualified because I'm qualified, is all. I'm just trying to help you out.”

“You're taking stupid risks,” she said. “Pushing them and antagonizing them is not the way to do this, for God's sake. You'll get us both killed.”

“Bullshit,” Reacher said. “They need to see us as people, not cargo.”

“Says who?” Holly snapped. “Who suddenly made you the big expert?”

He shrugged at her.

“Let me ask you a question,” he said. “If the boot was on the other foot, would you have left me alone in that barn?”

She thought about it.

“Of course I would have,” she said.

He smiled. She was probably telling the truth. He liked her for it.

“OK,” he said. “Next time you tell me, I'm gone. No argument.”

She was quiet for a long moment.

“Good,” she said. “You really want to help me out, you do exactly that.”

He shrugged. Moved a half-inch closer to her.

“Risky for you,” he said. “I get away, they might figure on just wasting you and disappearing.”

“I'll take the risk,” she said. “That's what I'm paid for.”

“So who are they?” he asked her. “And what do they want?”

“No idea,” she said.

She said it too quickly. He knew she knew.

“They want you, right?” he said. “Either because they want you personally, or because they want any old FBI agent and you were right there on the spot. How many FBI agents are there?”

“Bureau has twenty-five thousand employees,” she said. “Of which ten thousand are agents.”

“OK,” he said. “So they want you in particular. One out of ten thousand is too big a coincidence. This is not random.”

She looked away. He glanced at her.

“Why, Holly?” he asked.

She shrugged and shook her head.

“I don't know,” she said.

Too quickly. He glanced at her again. She sounded sure, but there was some big defensive edge there in her reply.

“I don't know,” she said again. “All I can figure is maybe they mistook me for somebody else from the office.”

Reacher laughed and turned his head toward her. His face touched her hair.

“You're joking, Holly Johnson,” he said. “You're not the type of woman gets confused with somebody else. And they watched you three weeks. Long enough to get familiar.”

She smiled away from him, up at the metal roof, ironically.

“Once seen, never forgotten, right?” she said. “I wish.”

“You in any doubt about that?” Reacher said. “You're the best-looking person I saw this week.”

“Thanks, Reacher,” she said. “It's Tuesday. You first saw me Monday. Big compliment, right?”

“But you get my drift,” he said.

She sat up, straight from the waist like a gymnast, and used both hands to flip her leg sideways. Propped herself on one elbow on the mattress. Hooked her hair behind her ear and looked down at him.

“I don't get anything about you,” she said.

He looked back up at her. Shrugged.

“You got questions, you ask them,” he said. “I'm all in favor of freedom of information.”

“OK,” she said. “Here's the first question: who the hell are you?”

He shrugged again and smiled.

“Jack Reacher,” he said. “No middle name, thirty-seven years and eight months old, unmarried, club doorman in Chicago.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

“Bullshit?” he repeated. “Which part? My name, my age, my marital status, or my occupation?”

“Your occupation,” she said. “You're not a club doorman.”

“I'm not?” he said. “So what am I?”

“You're a soldier,” she said. “You're in the Army.”

“I am?” he said.

“It's pretty obvious,” she said. “My dad is Army. I've lived on bases all my life. Everybody I ever saw was in the Army, right up until I was eighteen years old. I know what soldiers look like. I know how they act. I was pretty sure you were one. Then you took your shirt off, and I knew for definite.”

Reacher grinned.

“Why?” he said. “Is that a really uncouth, soldierly kind of a thing to do?”

Holly grinned back at him. Shook her head. Her hair came loose. She swept it back behind her ear, one finger bent like a small pale hook.

“That scar on your stomach,” she said. “Those awful stitches. That's a MASH job for sure. Some field hospital somewhere, took them about a minute and a half. Any civilian surgeon did stitches like that, he'd get sued for malpractice so fast he'd get dizzy.”

Reacher ran his finger over the lumpy skin. The stitches looked like a plan of the ties at a railroad yard.

“The guy was busy,” he said. “I thought he did pretty well, considering the circumstances. It was in Beirut. I was a long way down the priority list. I was only bleeding to death slowly.”

“So I'm right?” Holly said. “You're a soldier?”

Reacher smiled up at her again and shook his head.

“I'm a doorman,” he said. “Like I told you. Blues joint on the South Side. You should try it. Much better than the tourist places.”

She glanced between his huge scar and his face. Clamped her lips and slowly shook her head. Reacher nodded at her, like he was conceding the point.