Lee CHILD: Better off Dead

There was no knock. No greeting. No courtesy at all. The door just opened and a man came in. The same one as usual. Early forties, tight curly hair, tan linen suit. Perky, Dr. Houllier privately called him, because of the bouncy way the guy walked. He didn’t know his real name. He didn’t want to know.

The guy started at the far end of the room. The cold storage area. The meat locker as Dr. Houllier thought of it, after decades of dealing with its contents. There was a line of five steel doors. The guy approached, examined each handle in turn, but didn’t touch any of them. He never did. He moved on to the autopsy table in the center. Crossed to the line of steel trolleys against the far wall, near the autoclave. Then he approached the desk.

“Phone.” He held out his hand.

Dr. Houllier passed the guy his cell. The guy checked to make sure it wasn’t recording, slipped it into his pants pocket, and turned to the door. “Clear,” he said.

Another man walked in. Mantis, Dr. Houllier called him, because whenever he looked at the guy with his long skinny limbs, angular torso, and bulging eyes he couldn’t help but think of the insect. The large triangular burn scar on the guy’s cheek and the way his three missing fingers made his right hand look like a claw added to the effect. Although Dr. Houllier did know this guy’s real name. Waad Dendoncker. Everyone in town knew it, even if they’d never met him.

A third man followed Dendoncker in. He looked a little like Perky, but with straighter hair and a darker suit. And with such an anonymous face and bland way of moving that Dr. Houllier had never been inspired to find him a nickname.

Dendoncker stopped in the center of the room. His pale hair was almost invisible in the harsh light. He turned through 360 degrees, slowly, scanning the space around him. Then he turned to Dr. Houllier.

“Show me,” he said.

Dr. Houllier crossed the room. He checked his watch, then worked the lever that opened the center door of the meat locker. He pulled out the sliding rack, revealing a body covered by a sheet. It was tall. Almost as long as the tray it lay on. And broad. The shoulders only just fit through the opening. Dr. Houllier pulled the sheet, slowly, revealing the head. It was a man’s. Its hair was messy. The face was craggy and pale, and the eyes were taped shut.

“Move.” Dendoncker shoved Dr. Houllier aside. He pulled the sheet off and dropped it on the floor. The body was naked. If Michelangelo’s David was made to embody masculine beauty, this guy could have been another in the series. But at the opposite end of the spectrum. There was nothing elegant. Nothing delicate. This one was all about power and brutality. Pure and simple.

“That’s what killed him?” Dendoncker pointed to a wound on the guy’s chest. It was slightly raised. Its edges were rough and ragged and they were turning brown.

“Well, he didn’t die of sloth.” Dr. Houllier glanced at his watch. “I can guarantee that.”

“He’d been shot before.” Dendoncker pointed at a set of scars on the other side of the guy’s chest. “And there’s that .”

“The scar on his abdomen?” Dr. Houllier glanced down. “Like some kind of sea creature. He must have been stabbed at some point.”

“That’s no knife wound. That’s something else altogether.”

“Like what?”

“Doesn’t matter. What else do we know about him?”

“Not much.” Dr. Houllier snatched up the sheet and spread it loosely over the body, including its head.

Dendoncker pulled the sheet off again and dropped it back on the floor. He wasn’t done staring at the biggest of the dead guy’s scars.

“I spoke to the sheriff.” Dr. Houllier moved away, toward his desk. “Sounds like the guy was a drifter. He had a room at the Border Inn. He’d paid through next weekend, in cash, but he had no belongings there. And he’d registered under a false address. One East 161st Street, the Bronx, New York.”

“How do you know that’s false?”

“Because I’ve been there. It’s another way of saying Yankee Stadium . And the guy used a false name, too. He signed the register as John Smith.”

“Smith? Could be his real name.”

Dr. Houllier shook his head. He took a Ziploc bag from the top drawer of his desk and handed it to Dendoncker. “See for yourself. This was in his pocket.”

Dendoncker popped the seal and fished out a passport. It was crumpled and worn. He turned to the second page. Personal Information. “This has expired.”

“Doesn’t matter. The ID’s still valid. And look at the photo. It’s old, but it’s a match.”

“OK. Let’s see. Name: Reacher. Jack, none. Nationality: United States of America. Place of birth: Berlin, West Germany. Interesting.” Dendoncker looked back at the body on the rack. At the scar on its abdomen. “Maybe he wasn’t looking for Michael. Maybe he was looking for me. It’s a good job that crazy bitch killed him after all.” Dendoncker turned away and tossed the passport in a trash can next to Dr. Houllier’s desk. “Observations?”

Dr. Houllier held out one of his special forms. The one he’d just finished filling in. Dendoncker read each comment twice then crumpled the paper and dropped it into the trash, on top of the passport.

“Burn those.” He turned to the two guys he arrived with. “Get rid of the body. Dump it in the usual place.”

I first encountered the woman with the limp two days earlier. We met on a road outside the town with the dimly lit compound and the medical center where Dr. Houllier worked. The whole area was deserted. I was on foot. She was in a Jeep. It looked like it was ex-military. Old. Maybe Vietnam War era. Its stenciled markings were too faded to read. Its olive drab paintwork was caked and crusted with pale dust. It had no roof. No doors. Its windshield was folded forward, but not latched. The racks and straps for holding fuel cans and tools were empty and slack. The tread on its tires was worn way below the recommended minimum. Its motor wasn’t running. Its spare wheel was missing. Not the kind of thing anyone would call a well-maintained vehicle.

The sun was high in the sky. I guess a thermometer would have said it was a little over eighty but the lack of shade made it feel much hotter. Sweat was trickling down my back. The wind was picking up and grit was stinging my face. Walking hadn’t been part of my plan when I woke up that morning. But plans change. And not always for the better. It looked like the woman’s plans had taken an unwelcome turn as well. A fair chunk of the Jeep’s remaining rubber was now streaked across the faded blacktop from where she’d skidded. She’d gone right off the road and plowed into the trunk of a tree. A stunted, twisted, ugly thing with hardly any leaves. It wasn’t going to win any prizes for appearance. That was for sure. But it was clearly resilient. It was the only thing growing taller than knee height for miles in either direction. If the driver had lost control at any other point she would have wound up in the rough scrub on either side of the road. Probably been able to reverse right back out. The landscape looked like a bunch of giants had shoved their hands under a coarse green blanket and stretched their fingers wide.

How the woman had hit that exact spot was a mystery. Maybe the sun had blinded her. Maybe an animal had run out, or a bird had swooped down. It was unlikely that another vehicle had been involved. Maybe she was depressed and had done it on purpose. But whatever had caused her accident, that was a problem for another time.

The woman was slumped over the steering wheel. Her left arm was stretched forward across the flattened windshield. Her hand was open like she was reaching out to the tree for help. Her right arm was folded into her abdomen. She was facing down, into the footwell. She was completely inert. There was no sign of bleeding. No sign of any other injuries, which was good. But there was also no sound of breathing. I figured I should check for a pulse or some other indication she was alive so I stepped in close to the side of the Jeep. I reached for her neck, slowly and gently. I brushed her hair aside and homed in on her carotid. Then she sat up. Fast. She twisted around to face me. Used her left hand to bat my arm away. And her right to point a pistol at my gut.