Killing Floor (3 page)

He didn’t respond. I was getting curious about this situation.

“Is that your neighborhood?” I asked him. “All the way over at the highway?”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “Jurisdiction issue is clear. No way out for you there, Mr. Reacher. The town limit extends fourteen miles, right up to the highway. The warehousing out there is mine, no doubt about that.”

He waited. I nodded. He carried on.

“Kliner built the place, five years ago,” he said. “You heard of him?”

I shook my head.

“How should I have heard of him?” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”

“He’s a big deal around here,” Finlay said. “His operation out there pays us a lot of taxes, does us a lot of good. A lot of revenue and a lot of benefit for the town without a lot of mess, because it’s so far away, right? So we try to take care of it for him. But now it’s a homicide scene, and you’ve got explaining to do.”

The guy was doing his job, but he was wasting my time.

“OK, Finlay,” I said. “I’ll make a statement describing every little thing I did since I entered your lousy town limits until I got hauled in here in the middle of my damn breakfast. If you can make anything out of it, I’ll give you a damn medal. Because all I did was to place one foot in front of the other for nearly four hours in the pouring rain all the way through your precious fourteen damn miles.”

That was the longest speech I had made for six months. Finlay sat and gazed at me. I watched him struggling with any detective’s basic dilemma. His gut told him I might not be his man. But I was sitting right there in front of him. So what should a detective do? I let him ponder. Tried to time it right with a nudge in the right direction. I was going to say something about the real guy still running around out there while he was wasting time in here with me. That would feed his insecurity. But he jumped first. In the wrong direction.

“No statements,” he said. “I’ll ask the questions and you’ll answer them. You’re Jack-none-Reacher. No address. No ID. What are you, a vagrant?”

I sighed. Today was Friday. The big clock showed it was already more than half over. This guy Finlay was going to go through all the hoops with this. I was going to spend the weekend in a cell. Probably get out Monday.

“I’m not a vagrant, Finlay,” I said. “I’m a hobo. Big difference.”

He shook his head, slowly.

“Don’t get smart with me, Reacher,” he said. “You’re in deep shit. Bad things happened up there. Our witness saw you leaving the scene. You’re a stranger with no ID and no story. So don’t get smart with me.”

He was still just doing his job, but he was still wasting my time.

“I wasn’t leaving a homicide scene,” I said. “I was walking down a damn road. There’s a difference, right? People leaving homicide scenes run and hide. They don’t walk straight down the road. What’s wrong about walking down a road? People walk down roads all the damn time, don’t they?”

Finlay leaned forward and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Nobody has walked the length of that road since the invention of the automobile. So why no address? Where are you from? Answer the questions. Let’s get this done.”

“OK, Finlay, let’s get it done,” I said. “I don’t have an address because I don’t live anywhere. Maybe one day I’ll live somewhere and then I’ll have an address and I’ll send you a picture postcard and you can put it in your damn address book, since you seem so damn concerned about it.”

Finlay gazed at me and reviewed his options. Elected to go the patient route. Patient, but stubborn. Like he couldn’t be deflected.

“Where are you from?” he asked. “What was your last address?”

“What exactly do you mean when you say where am I from?” I asked.

His lips were clamped. I was getting him bad-tempered, too. But he stayed patient. Laced the patience with an icy sarcasm.

“OK,” he said. “You don’t understand my question, so let me try to make it quite clear. What I mean is, where were you born, or where have you lived for that majority period of your life which you instinctively regard as predominant in a social or cultural context?”

I just looked at him.

“I’ll give you an example,” he said. “I myself was born in Boston, was educated in Boston and subsequently worked for twenty years in Boston, so I would say, and I think you would agree, that I come from Boston.”

I was right. A Harvard guy. A Harvard guy, running out of patience.

“OK,” I said. “You’ve asked the questions. I’ll answer them. But let me tell you something. I’m not your guy. By Monday you’ll know I’m not your guy. So do yourself a favor. Don’t stop looking.”

Finlay was fighting a smile. He nodded gravely.

“I appreciate your advice,” he said. “And your concern for my career.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Go on,” he said.

“OK,” I said. “According to your fancy definition, I don’t come from anywhere. I come from a place called Military. I was born on a U.S. Army base in West Berlin. My old man was Marine Corps and my mother was a French civilian he met in Holland. They got married in Korea.”

Finlay nodded. Made a note.

“I was a military kid,” I said. “Show me a list of U.S. bases all around the world and that’s a list of where I lived. I did high school in two dozen different countries and I did four years up at West Point.”

“Go on,” Finlay said.

“I stayed in the army,” I said. “Military Police. I served and lived in all those bases all over again. Then, Finlay, after thirty-six years of first being an officer’s kid and then being an officer myself, suddenly there’s no need for a great big army anymore because the Soviets have gone belly-up. So hooray, we get the peace dividend. Which for you means your taxes get spent on something else, but for me means I’m a thirty-six-year-old unemployed ex-military policeman getting called a vagrant by smug civilian bastards who wouldn’t last five minutes in the world I survived.”

He thought for a moment. Wasn’t impressed.

“Continue,” he said.

I shrugged at him.

“So right now I’m just enjoying myself,” I said. “Maybe eventually I’ll find something to do, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll settle somewhere, maybe I won’t. But right now, I’m not looking to.”

He nodded. Jotted some more notes.

“When did you leave the army?” he asked.

“Six months ago,” I said. “April.”

“Have you worked at all since then?” he asked.

“You’re joking,” I said. “When was the last time you looked for work?”

“April,” he mimicked. “Six months ago. I got this job.”

“Well, good for you, Finlay,” I said.

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Finlay gazed at me for a moment.

“What have you been living on?” he asked. “What rank did you hold?”

“Major,” I said. “They give you severance pay when they kick you out. Still got most of it. Trying to make it last, you know?”

A long silence. Finlay drummed a rhythm with the wrong end of his pen.

“SO LET’S TALK ABOUT THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS,”
he said.

I sighed. Now I was heading for trouble.

“I came up on the Greyhound bus,” I said. “Got off at the county road. Eight o’clock this morning. Walked down into town, reached that diner, ordered breakfast and I was eating it when your guys came by and hauled me in.”

“You got business here?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“I’m out of work,” I said. “I haven’t got any business anywhere.”

He wrote that down.

“Where did you get on the bus?” he asked me.

“In Tampa,” I said. “Left at midnight last night.”

“Tampa in Florida?” he asked.

I nodded. He rattled open another drawer. Pulled out a Greyhound schedule. Riffed it open and ran a long brown finger down a page. This was a very thorough guy. He looked across at me.

“That’s an express bus,” he said. “Runs straight through north to Atlanta. Arrives there nine o’clock in the morning. Doesn’t stop here at eight.”

I shook my head.

“I asked the driver to stop,” I said. “He said he shouldn’t, but he did. Stopped specially, let me off.”

“You been around here before?” he asked.

I shook my head again.

“Got family down here?” he asked.

“Not down here,” I said.

“You got family anywhere?” he asked.

“A brother up in D.C.,” I said. “Works for the Treasury Department.”

“You got friends down here in Georgia?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

Finlay wrote it all down. Then there was a long silence. I knew for sure what the next question was going to be.

“So why?” he asked. “Why get off the bus at an unscheduled stop and walk fourteen miles in the rain to a place you had absolutely no reason to go to?”

That was the killer question. Finlay had picked it out right away. So would a prosecutor. And I had no real answer.

“What can I tell you?” I said. “It was an arbitrary decision. I was restless. I have to be somewhere, right?”

“But why here?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Guy next to me had a map, and I picked this place out. I wanted to get off the main drags. Thought I could loop back down toward the Gulf, farther west, maybe.”

“You picked this place out?” Finlay said. “Don’t give me that shit. How could you pick this place out? It’s just a name. It’s just a dot on the map. You must have had a reason.”

I nodded.

“I thought I’d come and look for Blind Blake,” I said.

“Who the hell is Blind Blake?” he said.

I watched him evaluating scenarios like a chess computer evaluates moves. Was Blind Blake my friend, my enemy, my accomplice, conspirator, mentor, creditor, debtor, my next victim?

“Blind Blake was a guitar player,” I said. “Died sixty years ago, maybe murdered. My brother bought a record, sleeve note said it happened in Margrave. He wrote me about it. Said he was through here a couple of times in the spring, some kind of business. I thought I’d come down and check the story out.”

Finlay looked blank. It must have sounded pretty thin to him. It would have sounded pretty thin to me too, in his position.

“You came here looking for a guitar player?” he said.

“A guitar player who died sixty years ago? Why? Are you a guitar player?”

“No,” I said.

“How did your brother write you?” he asked. “When you got no address?”

“He wrote my old unit,” I said. “They forward my mail to my bank, where I put my severance pay. They send it on when I wire them for cash.”

He shook his head. Made a note.

“The midnight Greyhound out of Tampa, right?” he said.

I nodded.

“Got your bus ticket?” he asked.

“In the property bag, I guess,” I said. I remembered Baker bagging up all my pocket junk. Stevenson tagging it.

“Would the bus driver remember?” Finlay said.

“Maybe,” I said. “It was a special stop. I had to ask him.”

I became like a spectator. The situation became abstract. My job had been not that different from Finlay’s. I had an odd feeling of conferring with him about somebody else’s case. Like we were colleagues discussing a knotty problem.

“Why aren’t you working?” Finlay asked.

I shrugged. Tried to explain.

“Because I don’t want to work,” I said. “I worked thirteen years, got me nowhere. I feel like I tried it their way, and to hell with them. Now I’m going to try it my way.”

Finlay sat and gazed at me.

“Did you have any trouble in the army?” he said.

“No more than you did in Boston,” I said.

He was surprised.

“What do you mean by that?” he said.

“You did twenty years in Boston,” I said. “That’s what you told me, Finlay. So why are you down here in this no-account little place? You should be taking your pension, going out fishing. Cape Cod or wherever. What’s your story?”

“That’s my business, Mr. Reacher,” he said. “Answer my question.”

I shrugged.

“Ask the army,” I said.

“I will,” he said. “You can be damn sure of that. Did you get an honorable discharge?”

“Would they give me severance if I didn’t?” I said.

“Why should I believe they gave you a dime?” he said. “You live like a damn vagrant. Honorable discharge? Yes or no?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

He made another note. Thought for a while.

“How did it make you feel, being let go?” he asked.

I thought about it. Shrugged at him.

“Didn’t make me feel like anything,” I said. “Made me feel like I was in the army, and now I’m not in the army.”

“Do you feel bitter?” he said. “Let down?”

“No,” I said. “Should I?”

“No problems at all?” he asked. Like there had to be something.

I felt like I had to give him some kind of an answer. But I couldn’t think of anything. I had been in the service since the day I was born. Now I was out. Being out felt great. Felt like freedom. Like all my life I’d had a slight headache. Not noticing until it was gone. My only problem was making a living. How to make a living without giving up the freedom was not an easy trick. I hadn’t earned a cent in six months. That was my only problem. But I wasn’t about to tell Finlay that. He’d see it as a motive. He’d think I had decided to bankroll my vagrant lifestyle by robbing people. At warehouses. And then killing them.

“I guess the transition is hard to manage,” I said. “Especially since I had the life as a kid, too.”

Finlay nodded. Considered my answer.

“Why you in particular?” he said. “Did you volunteer to muster out?”

“I never volunteer for anything,” I said. “Soldier’s basic rule.”

Another silence.

“Did you specialize?” he asked. “In the service?”

“General duties, initially,” I said. “That’s the system. Then I handled secrets security for five years. Then the last six years, I handled something else.”

Let him ask.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Homicide investigation,” I said.

Finlay leaned right back. Grunted. Did the steepled fingers thing again. He gazed at me and exhaled. Sat forward. Pointed a finger at me.

“Right,” he said. “I’m going to check you out. We’ve got your prints. Those should be on file with the army. We’ll get your service record. All of it. All the details. We’ll check with the bus company. Check your ticket. Find the driver, find the passengers. If what you say is right, we’ll know soon enough. And if it’s true, it may let you off the hook. Obviously, certain details of timing and methodology will determine the matter. Those details are as yet unclear.”