Jack and Joe: Hunt for Jack Reacher Series (The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series Book 6) (10 page)

Actually, no. The Reacher investigation had proved to be bizarre and unpredictable. I’d already seen crazier things than a staged accident happen where Reacher was involved. I shrugged. “I’m going to need to see those reports.”

“The FBI has access to anything and everything these days. More access than I have.” His voice was stiff, offended, which I found curious. “But you’ll have to wait. The coroner’s going to be a little busy for the next few days.”

Now he sounded full-on pissed.

“Look,” I said. “I’m not trying to sully the stellar reputation of an Army hero here.”

“That’s how I heard it.” He’d stuffed his hands into his pockets and his entire body seemed to close up tight.

Yep. Totally miffed. Read that one right.

“I was really looking forward to meeting Colonel Summer and I’m so sorry for your loss.” I drained the last of my coffee and placed the empty cup on the floor, which was the only flat surface available besides my bed and the bathroom vanity. “But put your professional hat on here and not your personal one.”

“Meaning?” He sounded petulant like a child saying
Oh, yeah? Well, make me!

“Three unusual things happened here within the past fifteen hours. Two were extraordinary things. Terrible things. The third—which was really the first of them—might have been just an interesting coincidence.” I kept my voice level, reasonable. “You’re a cop. Don’t tell me you believe in coincidence.”

He shook his head and his quills seemed to settle into place a little. “I am not following you. Sorry.”

“Unusual event number one: that bloodbath across the street.
The Lucky Bar
has been operating for decades in exactly the same location and exactly the same way.” I’d lay it out, one element at a time, watching his prickly reactions to be sure he followed the logic. “You told me that Alvin has always been a sucker for domestic abuse victims. Which means that angry exes of all types, some with homicidal intent, have no doubt come stalking in the past. Alvin has handled them. He’s never had a mass shooting in the bar before. True?”

“Yes.” Clipped. Unfriendly. But not quite as hostile.

I moved on. “Number two: Colonel Summer’s death on that mountain road. Think about it. Colonel Summer was posted at Fort Bird for five years, and she told me she was now investigating a corruption case at Bird, too. So she had driven that highway dozens if not hundreds of times, in all types of weather. According to her personnel file, Colonel Summer was known to be an excellent driver though her speeding habit was as well documented as her expertise. Everyone who knew her was aware of both her driving skill and her penchant for speed.”

He shrugged his assent, but his steady gaze never wavered. No epiphany related to the identity of the third item lightened his scowl.

You can lead a cop to water, but you can’t make him think. I applied patience and waited for him to make the connections himself.

He was a smart guy. He’d been in the business long enough. He had seen every kind of crime there was and all of his suspects were trained killers. Nobody built a resume like that by accepting coincidence as any kind of answer to anything.

He sighed. “You think the bar shooting and the crash happened today because FBI Special Agent Kim Otto came to Fort Bird to interview Colonel Eunice Summer.” The defensive tension lines in his face slowly faded and his shoulders relaxed. If he hadn’t been so totally undone by the events of his day, he might even have smiled. “You’re good at your job, Otto. I checked before we allowed you on base. But your conclusions seem a bit grandiose to me.”

When he put it that way, he missed the point by a mile. I shook my head. “Not exactly.”

“What, then? Exactly.”

My orders were to stay off the books and under the radar. I wouldn’t tell him anything more. He’d figure it out, or he wouldn’t. Either way, he was on his own.

“Anything else going on across the road over there?” I asked.

When he turned his head toward the window to check, I pushed off the bed, stood and stretched and pulled an antacid out of my pocket and popped it into my mouth. Nothing worse than coffee on an empty stomach after a bottle of cheap red wine and twelve gallons of adrenaline to get my stomach snake thrashing.

I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket for the third time since Clifton had arrived.

“Looks like they’ve removed all the civilians from the parking lot and secured the area,” he reported. “Crime scene will be there for a while.” He dropped his cup into my trashcan and walked to the door. “I have to get back.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” I said as he turned the doorknob and stepped into the corridor. “I’m very sorry about Colonel Summer, Tony. I was really looking forward to meeting her.”

He’d turned, but his demeanor felt almost as frosty as the snow falling outside. He nodded again, then walked toward the elevator without a backward glance. The door snugged closed behind him.

He would figure out that Reacher’s old case was at the center of everything. He was that kind of guy. The kind who would investigate whether he believed my theories or not.

And when he caught up with the facts and the logic, he would call. He might even have something useful to add. Until then, Gaspar and I were on our own.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I’d received three text messages while Clifton was here. One from Gaspar and two from the Boss.

Gaspar’s had come first. “American #7392. Nashville. 1115. I’ll get a car.” That last bit made me grin. Of course, Gaspar would get a car. Which translated into a big old boat of a vehicle. He’d walk before he’d be caught dead driving a little SUV like the one I’d rented in Charlotte. He was number two and number two always drove and the driver needed to be comfortable, he said.

Next were two texts from the Boss. The first said: “Confirmed. Delta #846. Departs Charlotte 0945. Secure files available.”

I replied, “OK.”

The Boss’s second text confirmed my earlier suspicion that he couldn’t actually see inside this hotel room, and he couldn’t hear my conversations here, either. He texted: “Summer. Deceased.”

He’d known about Colonel Summer’s death hours ago and he hadn’t told me. When I called Major Clifton about the shooting at
The Lucky Bar
, the Boss knew I’d find out about Summer. So he’d sent the second text
after
Major Clifton had delivered the news instead of before.

Which confirmed, again, that Gaspar was right. The Boss wasn’t God and he didn’t know everything.

It also confirmed that he was only reliable when he felt like it.

My reply to the Boss’s text was, as the Brits say, cheeky. “Suspicious circumstances. Please collect reports.”

I checked my Seiko for the time. It was already five o’clock. The drive from here to the Charlotte airport was 126 miles. It would take more than two hours in this weather, according to the GPS.

Which meant Gaspar’s flight would be on the ground in Nashville for at least half an hour before I could get there.

I quickly connected to the secure satellite and downloaded the new files to read on the plane. I watched the news footage of Summer’s crash and downloaded that, too. Then I collected the few items I’d brought with me, stuffed them into my bags, and tossed my room key onto the bed on my way out.

I was already on the road when I remembered two things I should not have missed. First, Tony Clifton didn’t answer my question. I’d asked, “You feel confident her death was an accident, then?” He’d replied, “What else would it be?” Not a lie, exactly. But a diversion. He knew something more and I should have followed up. The Boss would know. I made a mental note to ask him if I couldn’t find the answer another way.

Second, I still hadn’t opened that flat manila envelope from the sentry at the Fort Bird exit gate. I’d do that on the plane, too.

CHAPTER 14

The former Lesley Browning, and perhaps former Mrs. Joe Reacher, now lived in a suburb thirty minutes due west of Nashville, Tennessee. The non-stop flight from Charlotte was less than two hours in the air on a Canadair CRJ 700. Only sixty-six passengers aboard. The three-man crew consisted of a pilot, a co-pilot, and one flight attendant.

In my line of work, flying was as necessary as a root canal and nowhere near as pleasant. People who are not afraid to fly tell me fear of flying is irrational. They say flying is safer than driving a car or riding a bike. They are idiots.

Planes make powerful weapons; we all know that too well. They’re also machines that can fail like every other machine. They are operated by humans, none of whom is perfect. And planes are no match for Mother Nature.

But the worst thing about planes is that I wasn’t in control of the flight, which meant evasive maneuvers were never an option.

I tightened my lap belt, placed an antacid on my tongue and pressed it to the roof of my mouth, closed my eyes, and clenched the armrests for takeoff.

Once we were airborne and were at an altitude as safe as we were going to get for portable electronic devices, I unencrypted and opened the Boss’s file. The summary report for Joe [none] Reacher was first. Not much new. Most of it was information we’d uncovered when our assignment began.

Why had Stan and Josephine Reacher been opposed to middle names, I wondered again? Neither brother owned one.

I skimmed the data. Basic statistical information included date of birth and death. Joe had died in the field in the line of duty at thirty-eight. Not long after his brother left the Army and turned up in Margrave, Georgia.

Joe Reacher had enrolled in and graduated from West Point two years before his brother.

After West Point, Joe served in Army Intelligence. In my experience, no one serving in that position was likely to have been a saint. Those guys were laser-focused on the necessary and unencumbered by niceties. Joe’s file from those days was probably scrubbed as clean as his brother’s. I’d asked for it several times. The Boss said Joe Reacher’s Army Intelligence file was classified, which it likely was.

After that, Joe had moved into another classified and undisclosed position at Treasury, where he was working on January 10, 1990, when his mother Josephine died in Paris at the age of sixty. The only thing new to me here was that both Jack and Joe Reacher attended Josephine’s funeral on January 14, four days after her death.

A quick memory check confirmed that Jack Reacher had left Fort Bird for the last time on the day before he buried his mother. I made a note to check his flights. He could have arrived in Paris early, but he might have been doing something else between Fort Bird and Paris, too.

There was nothing in Joe Reacher’s file about Lesley Browning. No indication their marriage had ever happened or been terminated, which made me feel better. At least I hadn’t missed a lead as obvious as an ex-wife for no reason. Records should exist somewhere, but finding them would take time and effort, which I hoped would not be necessary. My plan was to go right to the source.

As requested, the Boss had located Lesley Browning, formerly of Newburgh, New York, the childhood home of Matthew and Anthony Clifton, not far from West Point. The encrypted file contained basic information about Lesley. She was a year younger than Joe, which meant they were both old enough to marry without parental consent at the time the union was purported to have been made.

Whether they had ever married or not, she should have known things about Joe that no one else had told us. Which could lead me to something relevant about Jack. Which could lead, well, anywhere.

Or nowhere. Again.

Looking at the pathetically slim connection with a clear eye from 40,000 feet, chasing down Lesley Browning seemed like a stupid idea. She was just a kid back then. Barely eighteen. Her marriage to Joe, if it had taken place, had been brief. She was married again now, with children. What could she possibly know that would help complete the Reacher file all these years later?

But we were on the way and there was no going back and nowhere else to go if we did turn back. Only one choice. Again.

I’d traveled the still icy and treacherous highway where Colonel Summers died on the way to the Charlotte airport, white knuckled and nervous the whole time. As I watched the downloaded news footage again on my laptop, I imagined what the crash must have been like for her.

Speed kills. Maybe those were Eunice Summer’s last thoughts if she had time to think at all. She was running late and traveling eighty miles an hour in a fifty-mile-an-hour zone when she slammed into the tanker. She was an excellent driver, but also a notorious lead foot who’d been warned a million times. Maybe that thought flashed into her head, too, half-an-instant before impact.

Then again, if the tanker hadn’t been there, she’d have been fine.

And even if it
was
there—and it definitely was—why in the hell did a driver as skilled as Summer simply plow into it?

Several factors contributed to the perfect setup for catastrophe. That section of Interstate banked on a steep, widening curve. Rain slicked the asphalt. Light fog settled over the road. Even if I’d been familiar with the road, I would have slowed to the fifty-mile-an-hour speed limit, at least, but I was no expert driver like Summer. Maybe she’d considered it a challenge or something.

No skid marks extended even a short, wavy distance behind her car. Even with both feet standing on the brake applying every ounce of strength she owned, she’d been running way too fast to lay a long trail of rubber in between rounding that bend and flattening her vehicle and herself into the truck.