Make Me (31 page)

There were many factors that made a handgun either accurate or not accurate. The velocity of the round and the length of the barrel were the most important, aided or not by aerodynamic subtleties like the degree of spin imparted by the rifling grooves, which either worked well or didn’t, depending on the bullet. Precision of manufacture was influential, with careful machining of quality metal much preferred over casting from leftover slag. Not that anything much mattered at seven feet. A pore to the left or a wrinkle to the right was immaterial. The human face was a big enough target, generally hard to miss at close quarters, and the man-on-first’s was no exception.

It was a through-and-through, obviously, given the short range and the power of the Magnum round. Twenty feet behind the guy’s head the wall instantly cratered, the size of a punch bowl, and a ghastly split second later the contents of the guy’s brain pan arrived to fill it, with a wet slap, all red and gray and purple. Meanwhile the guy himself was going down vertically, as if he had stepped into an elevator shaft, and Reacher was turning fractionally left, from the waist, shoulders braced, looking for the third-base guy, the furthest away, because some back-of-the-brain calculation was telling him the guy had a better line of return fire, and he wasn’t drooling as bad as the second-base guy, so maybe he was less invested in the upcoming entertainment, and therefore more likely to start blasting, even at the risk of damaged goods.

Reacher eased the trigger home, and he felt the mechanism turn, gears and cams and levers, effortless, and the gun fired, in his mind a considered shot, a decent interval after his first, but in the real world almost a double tap, a fast
bang-move-bang,
a craftsman going about his business, calmly, using his natural-born gifts. It was a through-and-through again, inevitably, in the guy’s upper lip, out the base of his skull, shattering the slider window, and exploding a pile of wedding presents on the table in the yard outside, in a cloud of paper fragments, white and silver, like confetti a few days early. The broken glass came down like a waterfall, governed by gravity, and therefore at the same downward speed as the third-base guy, who was also governed by gravity. Reacher saw an inch of their synchronized descent, and then he whipped away to the right, to find the second-base guy.

Because at that point the race was really on, and Reacher was losing. One guy was nothing, and two guys were never really a problem either, but a third guy could get tricky. The
bang-bang
of his pals going down tended to concentrate his mind, and worse than that gave him time to get his head in the game, to react, to finally realize
oh yeah I’ve got a gun in my hand,
to bring the gun up, slower than usual, because of the fat suppressor tube, because the gun was twice as long as his muscle memory thought it was, and also heavier, and therefore less controllable, which was all good, because his traverse was a whole lot shorter than Reacher’s needed to be. He was almost there already. Just inches away. Game almost over. But Reacher kept on moving, in what felt like hopeless slow motion, like forcing the back of his hand through molasses on a cold winter’s day, his left eye on the Python’s front sight, his right eye on the hole in the end of the suppressor tube, which was still elliptical, but only slightly. It was an inch away from dead on.

The Python was a foot away from dead on.

Reacher chopped it downward, like cracking a whip backhand, mainly for extra speed and power, but also because the guy was widest at the shoulders, and aiming was a luxury Reacher could no longer afford. The Python was a double-action weapon, which meant the same trigger pull cocked the hammer and then dropped it, so he started early, getting the cylinder turning while the gun was still moving, seeing the hammer come up, feeling the cams and the levers, waiting, then firing, trusting millisecond timing and momentum and deflection and complex four-dimensional calculations.

In other words, a wing and a prayer.

But it worked, apparently.

Because the guy didn’t fire back, and a red chunk came out of his neck. Big enough to feed a family.

A triple play.

Unassisted.

Baseball immortality.

Behind the guy the bullet smashed its way in and out of a powder room and shattered a lamp in the hallway. The guy himself went down in a heap, with what should have been a thump and a clatter, but Reacher heard none of it, because a Magnum’s downside was deafness, at least temporary, especially inside. Around him the others were helpless with shock, as if frozen in place by a camera strobe or a flash of lightning. McCann’s sister was on her knees, her mouth wide open in a scream Reacher couldn’t hear, and Emily was crouched against the base of the hallway wall. Understandable. A Magnum inside was like a stun grenade. Three times.

Then the hiss and the roar dulled a little, and people started moving. Chang went for Emily, and Evan helped his wife up and then shouldered his way through for a look at the living room, whereupon he turned around and started herding people back toward the bedroom again, shaking his head emphatically, saying, “We can’t go in there,” over and over again. Not because of personal discomfort, Reacher supposed, the guy being a doctor and so on, but to spare his family the sight. Although he supposed they had been in a butcher’s shop, and survived the experience. Although three guys was a lot of dead meat. Or maybe he was worried about crime scene integrity. Too much TV.

The Lair family sat on the bed, smaller somehow, except for their eyes, all of them panting hard, all of them trying to hold it together. Chang paced. Reacher wiped the big old Colt and left it on Evan Lair’s night stand.

Lair said, “We should call the police. We have a legal responsibility.”

Chang said, “Yes, sir, that would be my advice. You need to get out in front of this.”

McCann’s sister said, “Peter’s dead, isn’t he?”

No answer.

“They got him and now they came to get me. Because they think I know what he knows. Or knew. Everyone thinks that. That’s what you think.”

Chang said, “We have no proof or first-hand evidence about Peter. It would be most improper for us to tell you anything. And Michael must be told first, anyway.”

“I expect he’s dead, too.”

“We have no information.”

The room went quiet.

Then Evan said, “What are we going to do?”

Reacher said, “About what?”

“We have dead people in our house.”

“They won’t come out smelling of roses. So they’ll call it a righteous shooting. A home invasion, silenced weapons, threats of sexual violence. We’re not going to jail over this. We’re going to get a pat on the head instead. Except I don’t really care for that kind of thing. I would be just as happy not to be mentioned at all. Like I wasn’t here. You should take the credit. Play around with the gun. Get your prints on it again. They’ll give you a free year at the country club. You’ll get new patients. The badass doc.”

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t care how it turns out. They’ll never find me. But I would appreciate a head start. Ms. Chang and I have a lot to do. It would help us if you would sit tight for about thirty minutes, before you call 911. Tell them any story you want. Tell them you were in shock. Hence the delay.”

“Thirty minutes,” Evan said.

“Shock can last that long.”

“OK.”

“But when it comes to the story, tell them only two of them had guns.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to take one with me. And some cops can count that high.”

“OK, thirty minutes. Two guns. If I can. I’m not good with uniforms.”

Reacher looked at Emily and said, “Ma’am, I’m very sorry your big week got ruined.”

Emily said, “I owe you my thanks.”

“Think nothing of it.”

He headed out, behind Chang, who stopped to hug McCann’s sister, and to say, in response to her mute inquiries, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Then they closed the door on them and headed down the hallway, past the photographs, to the living room. First up was the first-base guy, but he had collapsed at an awkward angle. His suppressor was in the pool of blood coming from what was left of his head, and suppressors have wadding inside, or very fine baffles, either one of which would leak blood forever, so they passed the guy by. The third-base guy was a detour, so Chang ducked down to the second-base guy, the guy who had done all the talking, and she scooped up his Ruger, white collar or not.

And then she stopped.

She whispered, “Reacher, this one is still breathing.”

Chapter
42

Reacher squatted by the horizontal
figure. Chang knelt beside him. The guy was on his back, his legs splayed, his arms in disarray. He was unconscious. Or deep in shock, or in a coma. Or all of the above. His neck was a mess. Half of it was missing. He smelled of dirty clothes and sweat and the iron stink of blood. He smelled of death.

But there was faint respiration, and a thready pulse.

“How is that even possible?” Reacher whispered. “A piece the size of a porterhouse steak came flying out of him.”

“Obviously not a vital piece,” Chang whispered back.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. We can’t call the ambulance. They’ll bring the cops with them. They always do, for gunshot victims. We wouldn’t get a head start. But on the other hand this guy looks pretty bad. He needs a trauma surgeon, as soon as possible.”

“Evan is a doctor.”

“But what kind? He’d take one look and call the ambulance himself. Immediately. And then he’d call the cops himself. Also immediately. He’s shaky on the thirty-minute thing anyway.”

“We could walk out and leave the guy here. Who would know?”

“Too hard on Evan. Potentially. This guy might live thirty minutes. Then the story would leak. He’d be the doctor who ignored a dying man so he could go sit in his bedroom.”

Reacher put his fingertips high on the guy’s neck, on the intact portion, above the wound, one on each side, behind the ears, near the hinges of the jaw.

He kept them there.

Chang said, “What are you doing?”

“Compressing the arteries that feed his brain.”

“You can’t do that.”

“What, it was OK to murder him the first time, but not the second time?”

“It’s wrong.”

“It was right the first time, when he was a piece of shit who was about to rape you at gunpoint. Did he change? Did he suddenly become some kind of a saintly martyr we should rush straight to the hospital? When did that part happen?”

“How long will this take?”

“Not long. He wasn’t well to begin with.”

“This is so wrong.”

“We’re doing him a favor. Like a horse with a broken leg. No one could fix this neck.”

Her phone rang.

Loud and clear. Penetrating. She juggled it out and hunched away and answered it. She listened. She whispered. She clicked off.

Reacher said, “Who was that?”

“Westwood has landed at Sky Harbor.”

“Good to know.”

“I said we’d call him back.”

“Probably best.”

“The family will have heard the phone. They’ll know we’re still here.”

“They’ll think it’s one of these guys. In a pocket. They’ll ignore it.”

“Is that guy dead yet?”

“Nearly there. It’s peaceful. Like falling asleep.”

Then he sat back, and checked for a pulse, and didn’t find one.

He said, “Let’s go.”

—

Their car was
on the curb a hundred yards away, in what had been the closest spot when they arrived. Then the tide had gone out and left it high and dry. It was all alone. Chang drove. She U-turned across the road and headed back the way they had come. The development was quiet. Stunned by heat. The air shimmered everywhere, blue and gold, like liquid.

The gatehouse had both barriers up. Both red-striped poles were vertical. Like a fat bird dressed for the oven. Wide open, both ways, in and out. No guard behind the glass.

Chang stopped the car.

She said, “Check it out.”

The blacktop was hot under Reacher’s feet. He could have fried an egg on it. He heard the buzz of flies six feet away. The sliding window was open. Where the guard leaned out to talk.
I hope you folks have a wonderful afternoon
. The AC was running hard, trying to cope.

The guard was on the floor. All tangled up around the legs of his stool. Short sleeve shirt. Mottled arms. Open eyes. He had been shot once in the chest and once in the head. Flies were feasting on his blood. Blue and iridescent. Crawling. Already laying eggs.

Reacher walked back to the car.

He said, “The old guy. Not going to get any older.”

“Makes me feel better about the assisted homicide.”

“Makes me wish I had found a butter knife in the kitchen and cut his head off.”

Chang drove out the gate, and took random lefts and rights. They heard no howling sirens in the distance. No commotion. Just the perpetual Phoenix traffic, three shiny lanes, like a slow river, rolling along forever.

“Where to?” she said.

“Let’s go find a cup of coffee. And there’s a call you need to make.”

—

They pulled in
at a strip mall in Paradise Valley. There was a big-name coffee shop sandwiched between a store selling leather belts with silver buckles, and a store selling china plates with fancy patterns. Chang got iced coffee, and Reacher got hot. They sat at a sticky table in back.

Reacher said, “Tell Westwood to pick a hotel. Somewhere convenient, to suit his budget. Tell him we’ll join him there in two hours.”

“Why two hours?”

“Do you guys have a Phoenix office?”

“Of course. Lots of retired FBI in Phoenix.”

“We need local knowledge.”

“About the guys at the house?”

“About their boss. Who was also Hackett’s boss. A provider of outsourced security, for what is no doubt a varied roster of clients. The service economy at work. Physically he sounded like a big guy to me. On the phone. And then the guy who did all the talking at the house called him the fat man. Did you hear that? He was moaning about not getting paid, and not being able to renegotiate afterward, and he said those are the fat man’s rules. So we need a name. An Eastern European Phoenix-area crime boss who runs Eastern European muscle locally and people like Hackett elsewhere. And who could plausibly be called fat. Behind his back, presumably. Known locations would be good, too.”