Killing Floor (15 page)

12

I WAS WATCHING FINLAY VERY CAREFULLY, TRYING TO DECIDE
how far I should trust him. It was going to be a life or death decision. In the end I figured his answer to one simple question would make up my mind for me.

“Are they going to make you chief now?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “They’re not going to make me chief.”

“You sure about that?” I said.

“I’m sure,” he said.

“Whose decision is it?” I asked him.

“The mayor’s,” Finlay said. “Town mayor appoints the chief of police. He’s coming over. Guy named Teale. Some kind of an old Georgia family. Some ancestor was a railroad baron who owned everything in sight around here.”

“Is that the guy you’ve got statues of?” I said.

Finlay nodded.

“Caspar Teale,” he said. “He was the first. They’ve had Teales here ever since. This mayor must be the great-grandson or something.”

I was in a minefield. I needed to find a clear lane through.

“What’s the story with this guy Teale?” I asked him.

Finlay shrugged. Tried to find a way to explain it.

“He’s just a southern asshole,” he said. “Old Georgia family, probably a long line of southern assholes. They’ve been the mayors around here since the beginning. I dare say this one’s no worse than the others.”

“Was he upset?” I said. “When you called him about Morrison?”

“Worried, I think,” Finlay said. “He hates mess.”

“Why won’t he make you chief?” I said. “You’re the senior guy, right?”

“He just won’t,” Finlay said. “Why not is my business.”

I watched him for a moment longer. Life or death.

“Somewhere we can go to talk?” I said.

He looked over the desk at me.

“You thought it was Hubble got killed, right?” he said. “Why?”

“Hubble did get killed,” I said. “Fact that Morrison got killed as well doesn’t change it.”

WE WALKED DOWN TO THE CONVENIENCE STORE. SAT SIDE
by side at the empty counter, near the window. I sat at the same place the pale Mrs. Kliner had used when I was in there the day before. That seemed like a long time ago. The world had changed since then. We got tall mugs of coffee and a big plate of donuts. Didn’t look at each other directly. We looked at each other in the mirror behind the counter.

“Why won’t you get the promotion?” I asked him.

His reflection shrugged in the mirror. He was looking puzzled. He couldn’t see the connection. But he’d see it soon enough.

“I should get it,” he said. “I’m better qualified than all the others put together. I’ve done twenty years in a big city. A real police department. What the hell have they done? Look at Baker, for instance. He figures himself for a smart boy. But what has he done? Fifteen years in the sticks? In this backwater? What the hell does he know?”

“So why won’t you get it?” I said.

“It’s a personal matter,” he said.

“You think I’m going to sell it to the newspaper?” I asked him.

“It’s a long story,” he said.

“So tell it to me,” I said. “I need to know.”

He looked at me in the mirror. Took a deep breath.

“I finished in Boston in March,” he said. “Done my twenty years. Unblemished record. Eight commendations. I was one hell of a detective, Reacher. I had retirement on full pension to look forward to. But my wife was going crazy. Since last fall, she was getting agitated. It was so ironic. We were married all through those twenty years. I was working my ass off. Boston PD was a madhouse. We were working seven days a week. All day and all night. All around me guys were seeing their marriages fall apart. They were all getting divorced. One after the other.”

He stopped for a long pull on his coffee. Took a bite of donut.

“But not me,” he said. “My wife could take it. Never complained, never once. She was a miracle. Never gave me a hard time.”

He lapsed back into silence. I thought about twenty years in Boston. Working around the clock in that busy old city. Grimy nineteenth-century precincts. Overloaded facilities. Constant pressure. An endless parade of freaks, villains, politicians, problems. Finlay had done well to survive.

“It started last fall,” he said again. “We were within six months of the end. It was all going to be over. We were thinking of a cabin somewhere, maybe. Vacations. Plenty of time together. But she started panicking. She didn’t want plenty of time together. She didn’t want me to retire. She didn’t want me at home. She said she woke up to the fact that she didn’t like me. Didn’t love me. Didn’t want me around. She’d loved the twenty years. Didn’t want it to change. I couldn’t believe it. It had been my dream. Twenty years and then retire at forty-five. Then maybe another twenty years enjoying ourselves together before we got too old, you know? It was my dream and I’d worked toward it for twenty years. But she didn’t want it. She ended up saying the thought of twenty more years with me in a cabin in the woods was making her flesh crawl. It got really bitter. We fell apart. I was a total basket case.”

He trailed off again. We got more coffee. It was a sad story. Stories about wrecked dreams always are.

“So obviously, we got divorced,” he said. “Nothing else to do. She demanded it. It was terrible. I was totally out of it. Then in my last month in the department I started reading the union vacancy lists again. Saw this job down here. I called an old buddy in Atlanta FBI and asked him about it. He warned me off. He said forget it. He said it was a Mickey Mouse department in a town that wasn’t even on the map. The job was called the chief of detectives, but there was only one detective. The previous guy was a weirdo who hung himself. The department was run by a fat moron. The town was run by some old Georgia type who couldn’t remember slavery had been abolished. My friend up in Atlanta said forget it. But I was so screwed up I wanted it. I thought I could bury myself down here as a punishment, you know? A kind of penance. Also, I needed the money. They were offering top dollar and I was looking at alimony and lawyer bills, you know? So I applied for it and came down. It was Mayor Teale and Morrison who saw me. I was a basket case, Reacher. I was a wreck. I couldn’t string two words together. It had to be the worst job application in the history of the world. I must have come across as an idiot. But they gave me the job. I guess they needed a black guy to look good. I’m the first black cop in Margrave’s history.”

I turned on the stool and looked straight at him.

“So you figure you’re just a token?” I said. “That’s why Teale won’t make you chief?”

“It’s obvious, I guess,” he said. “He’s got me marked down as a token and an idiot. Not to be promoted further. Makes sense in a way. Can’t believe they gave me the job in the first place, token or not.”

I waved to the counter guy for the check. I was happy with Finlay’s story. He wasn’t going to be chief. So I trusted him. And I trusted Roscoe. It was going to be the three of us, against whoever. I shook my head at him in the mirror.

“You’re wrong,” I said. “That’s not the real reason. You’re not going to be chief because you’re not a criminal.”

I PAID THE CHECK WITH A TEN AND GOT ALL QUARTERS FOR
change. The guy still had no dollar bills. Then I told Finlay I needed to see the Morrison place. Told him I needed all the details. He just shrugged and led me outside. We turned and walked south. Passed by the village green and put the town behind us.

“I was the first one there,” he said. “About ten this morning. I hadn’t seen Morrison since Friday and I needed to update the guy, but I couldn’t get him on the phone. It was middle of the morning on a Monday and we hadn’t done anything worth a damn about a double homicide from last Thursday night. We needed to get our asses in gear. So I went up to his house to start looking for him.”

He went quiet and walked on. Revisiting in his mind the scene he’d found.

“Front door was standing open,” he said. “Maybe a half inch. It had a bad feel. I went in, found them upstairs in the master bedroom. It was like a butcher’s shop. Blood everywhere. He was nailed to the wall, sort of hanging off. Both of them sliced up, him and his wife. It was terrible. About twenty-four hours of decomposition. Warm weather. Very unpleasant. So I called in the whole crew and we went over every inch and pieced it all together. Literally, I’m afraid.”

He trailed off again. Just went quiet.

“So it happened Sunday morning?” I said.

He nodded.

“Sunday papers on the kitchen table,” he said. “Couple of sections opened out and the rest untouched. Breakfast things on the table. Medical examiner says about ten o’clock Sunday morning.”

“Any physical evidence left behind?” I asked him.

He nodded again. Grimly.

“Footprints in the blood,” he said. “The place was a lake of blood. Gallons of it. Partly dried up now, of course. They left footprints all over. But they were wearing rubber overshoes, you know? Like you get for the winter up north? No chance of tracing them. They must sell millions every year.”

They had come prepared. They’d known there was going to be a lot of blood. They’d brought overshoes. They must have brought overalls. Like the nylon bodysuits they wear in the slaughterhouse. On the killing floor. Big white nylon suits, hooded, the white nylon splashed and smeared with bright red blood.

“They wore gloves, too,” he said. “There are rubbery smears in the blood on the walls.”

“How many people?” I asked him. I was trying to build up a picture.

“Four,” he said. “The footprints are confused, but I think I can see four.”

I nodded. Four sounded right. About the minimum, I reckoned. Morrison and his wife would have been fighting for their lives. It would take four of them, at least. Four out of the ten Hubble had mentioned.

“Transport?” I said.

“Can’t really tell,” Finlay said. “Gravel driveway, washed into ruts here and there. I saw some wide ruts which look new, maybe. Could have been wide tires. Maybe a big four-wheel-drive or a small truck.”

We were a couple of hundred yards south of where Main Street had petered out. We turned west up a gravel driveway which must have been just about parallel with Beckman Drive. At the end of the driveway was Morrison’s house. It was a big formal place, white columns at the front, symmetrical evergreen trees dotted about. There was a new Lincoln parked near the door and a lot of police tape strung at waist height between the columns.

“We going in?” Finlay asked.

“May as well,” I said.

WE DUCKED UNDER THE TAPE AND PUSHED IN THROUGH
Morrison’s front door. The house was a wreck. Gray metallic fingerprint powder everywhere. Everything tossed and searched and photographed.

“You won’t find anything,” Finlay said. “We went over the whole place.”

I nodded and headed for the staircase. Went up and found the master bedroom. Stopped at the door and peered in. There was nothing to see except the ragged outline of the nail holes in the wall and the massive bloodstains. The blood was turning black. It looked like somebody had flung buckets of tar around. The carpet was crusty with it. On the parquet in the doorway I could see the footprints from the overshoes. I could make out the intricate pattern of the treads. I headed back downstairs and found Finlay leaning on a porch column out front.

“OK?” he asked me.

“Terrific,” I said. “You search the car?”

He shook his head.

“That’s Morrison’s,” he said. “We just looked for stuff the intruders might have left behind.”

I stepped over to the Lincoln and tried the door. Unlocked. Inside, there was a strong new-car smell and not much else. This was a chief’s car. It wasn’t going to be full of cheeseburger wrappings and soda cans like a patrolman’s would be. But I checked it out. Poked around in the door pockets and under the seats. Found nothing at all. Then I opened the glovebox and found something. There was a switchblade in there. It was a handsome thing. Ebony handle with Morrison’s name in gold-filled engraving. I popped the blade. Double edged, seven inches, Japanese surgical steel. Looked good. Brand-new, never been used. I closed it up and slipped it into my pocket. I was unarmed and facing big trouble. Morrison’s switchblade might make a difference. I slid out of the Lincoln and rejoined Finlay on the gravel.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We crunched back down the driveway together and turned north on the county road. Headed back to town. I could see the church steeple and the bronze statue in the distance, waiting for us.

13

“SOMETHING I NEED TO CHECK WITH YOU,” I SAID.

Finlay’s patience was running thin. He looked at his watch.

“You better not be wasting my time, Reacher,” he said.

We walked on north. The sun was dropping away from overhead, but the heat was still fierce. I didn’t know how Finlay could wear a tweed jacket. And a moleskin vest. I led him over to the village green. We crossed the grass and leaned up on the statue of old Caspar Teale, side by side.

“They cut his balls off, right?” I said.

He nodded. Looked at me, waiting.

“OK,” I said. “So the question is this: did you find his balls?”

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “We went over the whole place. Ourselves and the medical examiner. They weren’t there. His testicles are missing.”

He smiled as he said it. He was recovering his cop’s sense of humor.

“OK,” I said. “That’s what I needed to know.”

His smile widened. Reached his eyes.

“Why?” he said. “Do you know where they are?”

“When’s the autopsy?” I asked him.

He was still smiling.

“His autopsy won’t help,” he said. “They were cut off. They’re not connected to him anymore. They weren’t there. They’re missing. So how can they find them at his autopsy?”

“Not his autopsy,” I said. “Her autopsy. His wife’s. When they check what she ate.”

Finlay stopped smiling. Went quiet. Just looked at me.

“Talk, Reacher,” he said.

“OK,” I said. “That’s why we came out here, remember? So answer another question for me. How many homicides have they had in Margrave?”

He thought about it. Shrugged.

“None,” he said. “At least, not for maybe thirty years or so. Not since voter registration days, I guess.”

“And now you’ve had four in four days,” I said. “And pretty soon you’ll find the fifth.”

“Fifth?” he said. “Who’s the fifth?”

“Hubble,” I said. “My brother, this Sherman Stoller guy, the two Morrisons and Hubble makes five. No homicides in thirty years and now you’ve got five all at once. That can’t be any kind of a coincidence, right?”

“No way,” he said. “Of course not. They’re linked.”

“Right,” I said. “Now I’ll tell you some more links. But first of all, you got to understand something, right? I was just passing through here. On Friday and Saturday and Sunday right up to the time those prints came through on my brother, I wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to anything at all. I was just figuring I’d wait around and get the hell out of here as soon as possible.”

“So?” he said.

“So I was told stuff,” I said. “Hubble told me things in Warburton, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention. I wasn’t interested in him, OK? He told me things, and I didn’t follow them up with him and I probably don’t recall some of them.”

“Like what things?” Finlay said.

So I told him the things I remembered. I started the same way Hubble had started. Trapped inside some kind of a racket, terrorized by a threat against himself and his wife. A threat consisting of the same things, word for word, that Finlay had just seen for himself that morning.

“You sure about that?” he said. “Exactly the same?”

“Word for word,” I said. “Totally identical. Nailed to the wall, balls cut off, the wife forced to eat the balls, then they get their throats cut. Word-for-word identical, Finlay. So unless we got two threateners at the same time in the same place making the exact same threat, that’s another link.”

“So Morrison was inside the same scam as Hubble?” he said.

“Owned and operated by the same people,” I said.

Then I told him Hubble had been talking to an investigator. And I told him the investigator had been talking to Sherman Stoller, whoever he had been.

“Who was the investigator?” he asked. “And where does Joe fit in?”

“Joe was the investigator,” I said. “Hubble told me the tall guy with the shaved head was an investigator, trying to get him free.”

“What sort of an investigator was your brother?” Finlay said. “Who the hell was he working for?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “Last I heard he was working for the Treasury Department.”

Finlay pushed off the statue and started walking back north.

“I got to make some calls,” he said. “Time to go to work on this thing.”

“Walk slow,” I said. “I haven’t finished yet.”

FINLAY WAS ON THE SIDEWALK. I WAS IN THE ROAD, STAYING
clear of the low awnings in front of every store. There was no traffic on the street to worry about. Monday, two o’clock in the afternoon, and the town was deserted.

“How do you know Hubble’s dead?” Finlay asked me.

So I told him how I knew. He thought about it. He agreed with me.

“Because he was talking to an investigator?” he said.

I shook my head. Stopped outside the barbershop.

“No,” I said. “They didn’t know about that. If they had, they’d have got to him much earlier. Thursday at the latest. I figure they made the decision to waste him Friday, about five o’clock. Because you pulled him in with the phone number in Joe’s shoe. They figured he couldn’t be allowed to talk to cops or prison guards. So they set it up with Spivey. But Spivey’s boys blew it, so they tried over again. His wife said he got a call to wait at home today. They were setting him up for a second attempt. Looks like it worked.”

Finlay nodded slowly.

“Shit,” he said. “He was the only link we had to exactly what the hell is going on here. You should have hit on him while you had the chance, Reacher.”

“Thanks, Finlay,” I said. “If I’d known the dead guy was Joe, I’d have hit on him so hard, you’d have heard him yelling all the way over here.”

He just grunted. We moved over and sat together on the bench under the barbershop window.

“I asked him what Pluribus was,” I said. “He wouldn’t answer. He said there were ten local people involved in the scam, plus hired help in from the outside when necessary. And he said the scam is vulnerable until something happens on Sunday. Exposed, somehow.”

“What happens on Sunday?” Finlay asked.

“He didn’t tell me,” I said.

“And you didn’t press him?” he asked.

“I wasn’t very interested,” I said. “I told you that.”

“And he gave you no idea what the scam is all about?” he asked.

“No idea,” I said.

“Did he say who these ten people are?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Christ, Reacher, you’re a big help, you know that?” he said.

“I’m sorry, Finlay,” I said. “I thought Hubble was just some asshole. If I could go back and do it again, I’d do it a lot different, believe me.”

“Ten people?” he said again.

“Not counting himself,” I said. “Not counting Sherman Stoller, either. But I assume he was counting Chief Morrison.”

“Great,” Finlay said. “That only leaves me another nine to find.”

“You’ll find one of them today,” I said.

THE BLACK PICKUP I’D LAST SEEN LEAVING ENO’S PARKING
lot pulled up short at the opposite curb. It waited there, motor running. The Kliner kid leaned his head on his forearm and stared out of the window at me from across the street. Finlay didn’t see him. He was looking down at the sidewalk.

“You should be thinking about Morrison,” I said to him.

“What about him?” he said. “He’s dead, right?”

“But dead how?” I said. “What should that be saying to you?”

He shrugged.

“Somebody making an example of him?” he said. “A message?”

“Correct, Finlay,” I said. “But what had he done wrong?”

“Screwed something up, I guess,” he said.

“Correct, Finlay,” I said again. “He was told to cover up what went down at the warehouse Thursday night. That was his task for the day. He was up there at midnight, you know.”

“He was?” Finlay said. “You said that was a bullshit story.”

“No,” I said. “He didn’t see me up there. That part was the bullshit story. But he was up there himself. He saw Joe.”

“He did?” Finlay said. “How do you know that?”

“First time he saw me was Friday, right?” I said. “In the office? He was staring at me like he’d seen me before, but he couldn’t place where. That was because he’d seen Joe. He noticed a resemblance. Hubble said the same thing. He said I reminded him of his investigator.”

“So Morrison was there?” Finlay said. “Was he the shooter?”

“Can’t figure it that way,” I said. “Joe was a reasonably smart guy. He wouldn’t let a fat idiot like Morrison shoot him. The shooter must have been somebody else. I can’t figure Morrison for the maniac, either. That much physical exertion would have dropped him with a heart attack. I think he was the third guy. The clean-up guy. But he didn’t search Joe’s shoes. And because of that, Hubble got hauled in. That got somebody mad. It meant they had to waste Hubble, so Morrison was wasted as a punishment.”

“Some punishment,” Finlay said.

“Also a message,” I said. “So think about it.”

“Think about what?” he said. “Wasn’t a message for me.”

“So who was it a message for?” I said.

“Who is any such message for?” he said. “The next guy in line, right?”

I nodded.

“See why I was worried who was going to be the next chief?” I said.

Finlay dropped his head again and stared at the sidewalk.

“Christ,” he said. “You think the next chief will be in the scam?”

“Got to be,” I said. “Why would they have Morrison inside? Not for his wonderful personality, right? They had him inside because they need the chief on board. Because that’s useful to them in some particular way. So they wouldn’t waste Morrison unless they had a replacement ready. And whoever it is, we’re looking at a very dangerous guy. He’ll be going in there with Morrison’s example staring him in the face. Somebody will have just whispered to him: see what we did to Morrison? That’s what we’ll do to you if you screw up the way he did.”

“So who is it?” Finlay said. “Who’s going to be the new chief?”

“That’s what I was asking you,” I said.

WE SAT QUIET ON THE BENCH OUTSIDE THE BARBERSHOP FOR
a moment. Enjoyed the sun creeping in under the edge of the striped awning.

“It’s you, me and Roscoe,” I said. “Right now, the only safe thing is to assume everybody else is involved.”

“Why Roscoe?” he said.

“Lots of reasons,” I said. “But mainly because she worked hard to get me out of Warburton. Morrison wanted me in there as a fall guy for Thursday night, right? So if Roscoe was inside the scam, she’d have left me in there. But she got me out. She pulled in the exact opposite direction from Morrison. So if he was bent, she isn’t.”

He looked at me. Grunted.

“Only three of us?” he said. “You’re a cautious guy, Reacher.”

“You bet your ass I’m a cautious guy, Finlay,” I said. “People are getting killed here. One of them was my only brother.”

We stood up from the bench on the sidewalk. Across the street, the Kliner kid killed his motor and got out of the pickup. Started walking slowly over. Finlay rubbed his face with his hands, like he was washing without water.

“So what now?” he said.

“You got things to do,” I said. “You need to get Roscoe on one side and fill her in with the details, OK? Tell her to take a lot of care. Then you need to make some calls and find out from Washington what Joe was doing down here.”

“OK,” Finlay said. “What about you?”

I nodded across at the Kliner kid.

“I’m going to have a talk with this guy,” I said. “He keeps looking at me.”

Two things happened as the Kliner kid came near. First, Finlay left in a hurry. He just strode off north without another word. Second, I heard the barbershop blinds coming down in the window behind me. I glanced around. There could have been nobody else on the planet except for me and the Kliner kid.

Up close, the kid was an interesting study. He was no lightweight. Probably six-two, maybe one ninety, shot through with some kind of a restless energy. There was a lot of intelligence in his eyes, but there was also some kind of an eerie light burning in there. His eyes told me this probably wasn’t the most rational character I was ever going to meet in my whole life. He came close and stood in front of me. Just stared at me.

“You’re trespassing,” he said.

“This is your sidewalk?” I said.

“It sure is,” the kid said. “My daddy’s Foundation paid for every inch of it. Every brick. But I’m not talking about the sidewalk. I’m talking about Miss Roscoe. She’s mine. She’s mine, right from when I first saw her. She’s waiting for me. Five years, she’s been waiting for me, until the time is right.”

I gazed back at him.

“You understand English?” I said.

The kid tensed up. He was just about hopping from foot to foot.

“I’m a reasonable guy,” I said. “First time Miss Roscoe tells me she wants you instead of me, I’m out of here. Until then, you back off. Understand that?”

The kid was boiling. But then he changed. It was like he was operated by a remote control and somebody had just hit a button and switched the channel. He relaxed and shrugged and smiled a wide, boyish smile.

“OK,” he said. “No hard feelings, right?”

He stuck out his hand to shake on it and he nearly fooled me. Right at the last split second I pulled my own hand back a fraction and closed around his knuckles, not his palm. It’s an old army trick. They go to shake your hand, but they’re aiming to crush it. Some big macho ritual. The way out is to be ready. You pull back a fraction and you squeeze back. You’re squeezing their knuckles, not the meat of their palm. Their grip is neutralized. If you catch it right, you can’t lose.

He started crushing, but he never stood a chance. He was going for the steady squeeze, so he could stare into my eyes while I sweated it out. But he never got near. I crunched his knuckles once, then twice, a little harder, and then I dropped his hand and turned away. I was a good sixty yards north before I heard the truck start up. It rumbled south and its noise was lost in the buzz of the heat.