Small Wars (4 page)

Reacher started at the far end of a random potential journey, at what the government survey labeled a bar, and what the much older topographical sheets called a Negro Night Club. It was about thirty miles out. An hour by car, probably, given the prevailing conditions. There was no really direct way to get there. An intending patron departing Fort Smith would have to leave the county road at the first fork, and then thread through the woods on any one of ten potential routes, all looping and curving, none obviously better than another. The road Crawford had used had nothing to recommend it. Not in terms of efficiency. It might even have added unnecessary distance. A mile or two.

Reacher said, “Why would the guy with the big feet set up there? He could go days without seeing traffic. And nine times out of ten what traffic he saw would be soldiers. From here. What kind of a business plan is that? He decides to make a living by mugging Delta Force and Army Rangers? Good luck with that career choice.”

“Why would anyone set up there?” Ellsbury said. “But we know someone did.”

“You think the guy they got did it? Two to the chest and one to the head? That's a learned technique. Center mass, skip left, center mass again, skip up, one to the head just in case they get over the chest wounds. It's relatively precise. It's been practiced.”

“They practice it here. But no one is unaccounted for ahead of when she left. It wasn't one of ours lying in wait.”

“And I doubt it was a guy with a skeletal disorder that probably hurts his fine motor control, either.”

“He's got the tires and the gun and the feet. He's a weird black guy who lives alone in a hut. This is 1989, but it's Georgia. Sometimes it's still 1959. This guy will do. He won't be the first and he won't be the last.”

“I want to see that road for myself,” Reacher said.

Neagley drove, with Reacher in the front and Ellsbury in the back. Off the county road at the first fork, into the capillary network, and then finally onto a not-quite two-lane blacktop ribbon through the trees, mostly straight and sunlit, bordered by fine black mud washed smooth again by the rain. Ellsbury peered ahead between the seats, and pointed Neagley to a spot about three hundred yards after a slight bend. He said, “That's the scene.”

There was plenty of scope for a threat assessment. Neagley pretended to see the broken-down vehicle, and lifted off and coasted, and she could have stopped two hundred yards out, or a hundred, or fifty, or wherever she wanted. She came to rest right where Ellsbury said it happened. There was nothing to see. The mud was dull and flat and uniform, lightly pocked by rain spatter. But the marks in the photographs had told the story. A vehicle had been parked right there, across the not-quite two traffic lanes, and a guy had gotten out and waited near the front, probably pretending to look under the hood.

They all got out, making fresh marks in the mud, deep and oozing where it was thick, and spongy and blotted where it wasn't. The air smelled of rain and sun and earth and pine. Reacher looked back, and looked ahead.

He said, “OK, I've seen enough.”

Then he looked ahead again.

A car was coming. Black and white. A cop car. State Police. A spotlight on the pillar, and a bubble on the roof, like a little red hat. One guy behind the wheel. Otherwise empty.

The car came to a stop symmetrical with Neagley's, nose to nose in the other traffic lane. The trooper climbed out. A young guy, with fair hair and a red face. Built like a side of beef. He had small deep-set eyes. They made him look mean.

He said, “The army is supposed to inform us before interfering with the crime scene.”

Reacher said, “Are you working this case?”

“Just taking a look, out of curiosity.”

“Then get lost.”

“Get what?”

“Lost.”

The guy stepped closer and looked at Reacher's chest.
U.S. Army. Reacher
. He said, “You're the boy who don't like our work.”

Reacher said, “I'm the boy?”

“You think we got the wrong guy.”

“You think you got the right guy?”

“Sure I do. It's scientific. Plenty of people have Firestone tires, and plenty have nine-millimeter ammunition, but not many have size fifteen feet, so when you put it all together it's like three cherries on a slot machine.”

“Will the guy get a lawyer?”

“Of course. The public defender.”

“Does the public defender have a pulse?”

“Of course.”

“Doesn't that worry you? You think the three-cherries argument will stand up to the slightest scrutiny? Were you out sick the day they taught thinking?”

“Now you're being unpleasant.”

“Not yet,” Reacher said. “You'll notice the difference.”

“This is a public road. I could arrest you.”

“Theoretically possible. Like I could get a date with Miss America.”

“You planning to resist?”

“Maybe I'll arrest you instead.”

“For what?”

“I'm sure we could figure something out. A bit of this, and a bit of that. We could get three cherries of our own.”

The guy said, “Try it.”

He stepped up and squared his shoulders.
Local civilian hotheads with guns in their pockets and points to prove
.

Reacher said, “Sergeant, arrest this man.”

Neagley stepped up.

Face to face with the trooper.

She said, “Sir, I'm going to lean forward and take your weapon from its holster.”

The guy said, “Little lady, I don't think you are.”

Neagley said, “If you impede me in any way, you will be handcuffed.”

The guy shoved her in the chest.

Which was a mistake on several different levels. Military discipline could not allow assaults by detainees. And Neagley hated physical contact. No one knew why. But it was a recognized issue. She couldn't bear to be touched. She wouldn't even shake hands. Not even with a friend. Thus a glove laid on her in anger was beyond the pale, and liable to produce a reaction.

For the trooper the reaction resulted in a broken nose and a kick in the balls. She came off the back foot and drove the heel of her hand into the guy's face, from below, an arching blow like a flyweight boxer thumping the heavy bag, and there was a puff of blood in the air, and the guy skittered back on his heels, and she punted him another six feet with the kick, and he went down on his ass with his back against the front wheel of his car, huffing and puffing and squealing.

Reacher said, “Feel free to make an official complaint. I'll swear out a witness statement. About how you got your clock cleaned by a girl. You want that in the record?”

The guy didn't, apparently. He just flapped his hands, mute.

Get lost
.

In the car on the way back to base Neagley said, “I agree the guy was an idiot.”

Reacher said, “But?”

“Why me? Why didn't you do it?”

“Like they say in England, why buy a dog and bark yourself?”

Back on the base Ellsbury's sergeant had a phone message for Neagley. She returned the call and came out and said, “They found an address for Crawford's parents. Plural. Now they think the father is still alive. But the phone number doesn't get them past the servants' quarters. They can't even establish whether the Crawfords are home or not right now. I guess the butler is too discreet. They want someone to do a drive-by, to get the lay of the land.”

Reacher said, “Where is it?”

“Myrtle Beach.”

“That's in South Carolina.”

“Which is an adjacent state. I think we should volunteer.”

“Why?”

“Why not? It's a done deal here.”

Neagley drove. An adjacent state, but still hundreds of miles. They took I-16 to I-95, and headed north, and then jumped off cross-country for the final short distance, in the middle of the afternoon. They had an address but no street map, so they asked at gas stations until they got pointed in the right direction, which turned out to be a ritzy enclave between an inland waterway and the ocean. A manicured road ran through it, with little dead-end streets coming off it left and right like ribs. The Crawfords' street was on the ocean side. Their house was a big mansion facing the sea, on a deep lot with a private beach.

It looked closed up.

The windows were shuttered from the inside. Painted surfaces, reflecting blindly through the glass. Neagley said, “They're obviously away. In which case we should go talk to the butler. We shouldn't take no for an answer. Evasion is easy on the phone. Face to face is harder.”

“Works for me,” Reacher said.

They drove in, on a long cobblestone driveway, their Firestone tires pattering, and they paused briefly at the front door, but it was blank and bolted, so they followed the cobblestones around to the back, where a back door was also blank and bolted. The servants' entrance, currently not in use.

“So where is the servant?” Reacher said. “How discreet can one man be?”

There was a garage block. Most of the bays had doors, but one was a pass-through to a utility yard in back. There was a car parked in the pass-through. An old compact, all sun-faded and dinged up with age. A plausible POV for a butler.

There was an apartment above the garage bays. All dormer windows and gingerbread trim, slimy from the salt air. There was an external staircase leading to the door.

Reacher said, “This place is so upscale even the downstairs people are upstairs.”

He went first, with Neagley at his shoulder, and he knocked on the door. The door was opened immediately. As if they were expected. Which they were, Reacher supposed. Their car had made a certain amount of noise.

A woman. Maybe sixty years old, and careworn. A housedress. Knuckles like walnuts. A hard worker. She said, “Yes?”

Reacher said, “Ma'am, we're from the U.S. Army, and we need to know Mr. and Mrs. Crawford's current location.”

“Does it concern their daughter?”

“At this point, until I know their whereabouts, I'm not at liberty to say what it concerns.”

The woman said, “You better come in and speak to my husband.”

Who was not the butler. Not if the shows Reacher had seen on TV were true. This was a hangdog fellow, thin and bent over from labor, with big rough hands. A gardener, maybe.

Reacher said, “What's your phone number?”

They told him, and Neagley nodded. Reacher said, “Are you the only people here at the moment?”

They said yes, and Reacher said, “So I believe the army has already called you. For some reason yours is the only number we have.”

The hangdog guy said, “The family is away.”

“Where?”

The woman said, “We should know what this is about.”

“You can't filter their news. You don't have that right.”

“So it is about their daughter. It's bad news, isn't it?”

The room was small and cramped. The ceiling was low, because of the eaves. The furniture was plain, and not generous in quantity. Storage was inadequate, clearly. Essential paperwork was stacked on the dining table. Bills, and mail. The floor was bare board. There was a television set. There was a shelf with three books, and a toy frog painted silver. Or an armadillo. Something humped. Maybe two inches long. Something crouching.

“Excuse me,” Reacher said.

He stepped closer.

Not a frog. Not an armadillo. A toy car. A sports coupe. Painted silver. A Porsche.

Reacher stepped over to the dining table. Picked up a piece of opened mail.

A bank statement. A savings account. Almost a hundred dollars in it.

It was addressed to H & R Crawford, at the address the army had, and the phone number was the same.

Not filtering the news.

Reacher said, “Sir, ma'am, I very much regret it's my duty on behalf of the Commander in Chief to inform you your daughter was the victim of an off-post homicide two evenings ago. The circumstances are still being investigated, but we do know her death must have been instantaneous and she can have felt no pain.”

Like most MPs Reacher and Neagley had delivered death messages before, and they knew the drill. Not touchy-feely like neighbors. The army way was appropriately grim, but with the stalwart radiation of wholesome sentiments such as courage and service and sacrifice. Eventually the parents started asking them questions, and they answered what they could. Career good, luck bad. Then Neagley said, “Tell us about her,” which Reacher assumed was a hundred percent professional interest, but which also played well in the psychological context.

The woman told the story. The mother. It came right out of her. She was the cook. The hangdog guy was a groundskeeper. The father. Caroline was their daughter. An only child. She had grown up right there, above the garages. She hadn't enjoyed it. She wanted what was in the big house. She was ten times smarter than them. Wasn't fair.

Reacher said, “She gave the impression she had family money.”

The hangdog guy said, “No, that was all hers. She gets paid a fortune. It's a government job. Those people look after each other. Pensions, too, I expect. All kinds of benefits.”

“No legacies? No inheritances?”

“We gave her thirty-five dollars when she went to West Point. It was all we had saved. That's all she ever got. Anything else, she earned.”

Reacher said, “May I use your phone?”

They said yes, and he dialed the Pentagon. A number on a desk outside an office with a window. Answered by a sergeant.

Reacher said, “Is he there? It's his brother.”

Joe's voice came on the line.

Reacher said, “Name a good steakhouse in Alexandria open late.”

Joe did.

Reacher said, “I'll meet you there at nine o'clock tonight.”

“Why?”

“To keep you in the loop.”