Don't Know Jack (14 page)

“Unpredictable?”  

Finlay laughed. The sound was deep, resonant, and it shook the room for what seemed like a full minute. Eventually he said, “Agent Otto, I’d say that if you looked up that word in the dictionary, you’d find nothing but a full color photo of Jack Reacher.”

Then his handlers knocked on the door. Time to go. They accompanied Finlay toward the exit. He towered over Kim and he was a good four inches taller than Gaspar, too. When he reached the door, he turned and reached straight out and took her phone out of her pocket. Like a magic trick. He pushed the button to stop the recording and dropped the phone back into place.

He said, “Let’s go off the record now.”  He slid two business cards from his jacket pocket. He handed one to each of them. “I promised your boss I’d help you if I can. That’s my private cell. Call me with your questions after you’ve read the files. Let me know if you need anything else. If I can’t talk immediately, I’ll get back to you.”

Then with his hand on the doorknob he added, “And when you do find Jack Reacher, give him my regards, will you?  Ask him to call me when he has the time. You can give him that number.”

Gaspar asked, “Did you know Harry Black?”

Finlay thought and came up empty. “I don’t recognize the name. Who is he?”

“Who
was
he. He’s dead.”

Finlay shook his head. “Should I have known him?”

“He was a Margrave cop. Killed last night. Roscoe was pretty upset about it.”

There it was again. The eyelid flick. Finlay knew something. But he said, “Must have been hired after I left.”

“His wife shot him, she claims.”  Gaspar pulled out his smart phone and showed Finlay a picture. “Sylvia Black. Do you know her?”

The flick came before the lie this time, and again afterward.

“Never saw her before,” Finlay said.

“Did Reacher kill Harry Black?” Gaspar asked.

The aide knocked again, opened the door, stood aside.

“You’ll have to ask him yourself,” Finlay replied. He turned and walked away. His entourage followed behind him like ducklings follow their mother.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kim stared at Finlay’s business card. There was nothing on it except the phone number. No name. No title. She slapped it back and forth across her fingers. Gaspar said, “Roscoe and Finlay are both as nervous as hens in a fox house every time we ask about Reacher. They’ve got something to hide, and it’s big enough to bury them both. Don’t you think?”

Kim said, “Whatever they’re hiding, it’s something the boss doesn’t know.”

Gaspar raised his right eyebrow.

She said, “Don’t give me that. You’re the one who said he’s not God. Obviously he doesn’t know. Think it through, Zorro.”

“It’s a mystery to me how your mind works, Susie Kwan.”  Gaspar moved over to the coffee and poured a cup for each of them before pulling out his laptop. “We’ve got about an hour before our flight to Atlanta. I’m not walking into Margrave again until I know everything Roscoe and Finlay are hiding. No more flailing around in the dark. I’ll find the files Finlay was talking about. Should be easy enough unless they’re sealed. You take Joe Reacher and Sylvia Black.”

He bent his head to his task. She got her phone out. She sent the recording to her secure storage. Then she beamed a copy to her laptop. The audio would be transcribed and available on her laptop in minutes; she’d go through it again on the plane.

She asked, “You still think the Blacks are involved in the Reacher situation somehow?”  She wrinkled her nose. The coffee was tepid. She liked her coffee hot.

“It would be stupid not to think so,” Gaspar said.

“Agreed.”  And Special Agent Kim Louisa Otto would not fail because she’d been stupid. Not now, not ever. She walked to the window and pulled the heavy drapes open and gazed into the pre-dawn. Airports were fascinating places. Little cities of their own. Then she turned away from the window and rubbed the tension out of her neck and refocused.

She saw she had voice mail from Chief Roscoe’s cell phone. She pressed play. Only a fragment had been recorded due to fluctuating cell tower signals. Roscoe must have been out of range or in a vehicle when she called. “—couldn’t wait?  I told you I would handle this. Where did you take her?--”

“Sounds like Roscoe’s ticked off at us again,” Kim said. She put the message on speaker and played it again. Roscoe sounded angry. Gaspar didn’t look up from his screen, but he cocked his head like a wolf hearing distant threats.

Kim played the message twice more. “Makes no sense. What’s she talking about?  Did she call you at any point?”

He pulled his phone out to check. “Nothing. What time did she call?”

“Timer says her message came in at 12:33 a.m.”  Kim felt herself squint, remembered the white lines around Roscoe’s eyes and made an effort to stop wrinkling her face.

“I doubt she’d appreciate a call back at this hour. It’s got to be after four in the morning.”  Gaspar worked his laptop as fast as any college kid. “I’ve got an ace analyst in my office. She could find this stuff in a Miami Minute.”

“Which is what? Two hours?”

“Funny. The point is: I’m getting nowhere. Are you?”  He ran a hand through his hair, stood briefly to stretch, and restarted.

“She’s talking about Sylvia, right?”

“Who?”

“Roscoe.”

“Can’t imagine who else she’d be that pissed about, can you?”

“Why would we take Sylvia?  Why would anyone?  That’s crazy, isn’t it?”

Gaspar shrugged, not looking up from his work. “Our flight leaves in forty minutes.”

“I haven’t been this confused since I tried to learn Mandarin,” she said, not joking.

“What’s to learn?  Little oranges in a can.”  He glanced at her and said, “Look up Joe Reacher’s date of death. That’ll give us a way to figure out the exact date Jack Reacher arrived in Margrave, right?”

Kim said, “Joe died Thursday, September 4, 1997, about midnight.”

Gaspar stared at her. “Did you just pull that out of thin air?”

She shrugged. “It’s in Jack Reacher’s file. I’ve got a good memory for dates. As in: June 6, 1998, Roscoe’s daughter was born. Jacqueline Roscoe Trent. Nine pounds, two ounces. Thirty inches long. Fair hair. Blue eyes.”

“Big kid,” Gaspar said. “My wife would’ve killed me if any of ours were that size.”

“Beverly Roscoe and David Trent were married on Christmas Day 1997. December 25
^th
. The bride was nearly four months pregnant at the wedding.”

Gaspar pointed and clicked. He said, “Finlay was promoted from Chief of Detectives to Chief of Police on September 30, 1997, after the former top cop died on September 7, 1997. He was called Morrison. Which means that Joe Reacher and this Morrison guy died within three days of each other. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“No, it can’t,” she said. “And I just found Joe Reacher’s obituary.”

“Interesting?”

“Born in Palo, Leyte, Philippines, August
1958, died at the age of 38 years. Parents Stan and Josephine both predeceased him, his only sibling Jack survived him. Educated on military bases around the world, then West Point, then Military Intelligence, and then Treasury.”

“That’s an odd trajectory.”

“You bet. Military Intelligence and Treasury are about as divorced from each other as it’s possible to get and still be in government service. He was killed in the line of duty. As a Treasury agent. Cremated. Ashes scattered in Margrave, Georgia. Which is weird.”

“I know,” Gaspar said. “He was a veteran. Why wasn’t he buried at Arlington?”

“That’s not what’s weird. What’s weird is how a treasury agent gets killed in the line of duty in a sleepy little town like Margrave, Georgia, in September 1997?  How would that happen?  Why was he even there?”

“Were you even born in 1997?” Gaspar asked.

“There’s no death certificate online. This is nuts. We’re the FBI. The most sophisticated and best equipped and most comprehensive agency in the world. And we can’t get any information from our own sources on an active investigation?”

“Welcome under the radar, baby. If it was easy, they wouldn’t need high-octane talent like us, now would they?”  He closed his laptop and began packing up.

“I’m calling Roscoe.”

“Good luck with that.”

She picked up her phone and pressed the call back button.

Gaspar stretched and limped around the room, limbering up. She noticed the limp and knew he was shaking it off. The list of things she intended to discuss with him was already long, but maybe that one should be moved to the top. She put the call on speaker while she shoved cords into her bag and pulled the zippers. Roscoe’s cell rang ten times, twelve, fifteen. Then Roscoe’s angry voice filled the room. It said: “You better tell me your ass is back in Margrave and you have Sylvia Black with you.”

Gaspar tapped his wrist with his finger to show her time was ticking. Kim said, “Chief Roscoe, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Save it, Agent Otto. I’ve got the guy’s card right here in front of me. L. Mark Newton,
Esquire
. From Washington D.C. He had a Federal Marshal with him, for God’s sake. You sent them down here to pick up Sylvia. In the middle of the night when I wasn’t here to stop them. You know it. I know it. And I want her back. Whatever it is you want with her, you can get in the damn line behind me.”

“We don’t have her.”

“Save it,” Roscoe said again. “Just get her back here, or I’ll make you sorry. Are we clear?”

“Look, we don’t have her. But we’re on our way. See you before noon.”

The call died.

Gaspar said, “There’s one truly major flaw in that story.”

“Which is?”

“L. Mark Newton died last year,” he said.

"I know. I was at the funeral."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Halfway to the departure gate Kim felt the boss’s cell phone vibrate in her front trouser pocket. She shifted her bags around to free one hand and tried to fish the phone out without slowing her stride. She couldn’t do it. The phone buzzed on. It felt alive, wriggling against her abdomen. She’d have to stop. But she couldn’t. The jet way door at their gate was already closed. She saw the plane through the plate glass window, still parked outside. But passengers could not be boarded after the doors were closed. Technically, the plane was gone. They’d missed the flight.

“We have to board,” Kim told the gate agent, breathless.

“I’m sorry, that’s not possible,” the gate agent said without looking up. She was working the final documents to get the plane in the air.

Kim felt the cell phone buzz on. She’d never failed to answer the boss. She never planned to. She kept her voice calm. She said, “I need you to open the door.”  She put her hand in her pocket. To get the cell phone. But the gate agent misinterpreted. Her left hand darted under the counter. She hit the panic button.

Kim gave up on the cell phone and kept both hands in plain sight. She stood stock still. Where the hell was Gaspar?

He showed up three paces behind two TSA personnel. They had guns drawn. Kim kept her hands in view and said, “FBI,” as calmly as possible. She reached slowly across her body with her left hand and opened her jacket to reveal her badge, clipped to her waistband.