Ли Чайлд: No Middle Name

Maybe some part of the town was still working. A lone sawmill here or there. Maybe some people were still coming by. Not many, but enough. Certainly no one stared in the diner. No one hid behind a newspaper and surreptitiously dialled a phone.

Reacher waited.

He called again, a random number of minutes after the first hour had gone by. He cupped his hand over his mouth, so the background noise wouldn’t sound the same twice. He wanted them to think he was always on the move. If they thought he wasn’t, they would start to ask themselves where he was holed up, and Aaron seemed a smart enough guy to figure it out. He could step right in and pull up a chair.

The phone was answered on the first ring.

Aaron said, ‘This is Aaron.’

Reacher said, ‘You need to ask yourself a transportation question. Six guys took me to Warren last night. But only two guys brought me back this morning. Six guys was a lot of overtime in one evening. Overkill, some might say, for one prisoner in a bus. Especially when budgets are an issue. So why did it happen that way?’

‘You were an unknown quantity. Better safe than sorry.’

‘Then why didn’t I get the same six guys again this morning? They don’t know me any better now than they did last night.’

Aaron said, ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me why.’

‘Two possibilities. Not really competing. Kind of interlinked.’

‘Show me.’

‘They really, really wanted to get me there last night. It was important I went. My lawyer put in a reasonable request. They said no. They signed off on an unnecessary round trip that did nothing but waste gas and man hours. They assigned six guys to make sure I got there safe and sound.’

‘And?’

‘They didn’t expect me to leave again this morning. So they didn’t assign escorts. So when it came to it they had to scramble an odd-job crew who already had a bunch of other stuff to do today.’

‘That doesn’t make sense. Everyone expected you to leave again this morning. For the arraignment. Standard procedure. Common knowledge.’

‘So why the scramble?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They weren’t expecting me to leave.’

‘They knew you had to.’

‘Not if I was in a coma in the hospital. Or dead in the morgue. Which normally would be a surprise event. But they knew well in advance. They didn’t arrange round trip transportation.’

Aaron paused a beat.

He said, ‘It was you up at the prison.’

Reacher said, ‘The guy didn’t even know me. We had never crossed paths before. Yet he came straight for me. While his pals staged a diversion far away. He was coming up for parole. My guess is Delaney was the guy who busted him, way back in the day. Am I right?’

‘Yes, as it happens.’

‘So they made a deal. If the big guy took care of me, under the radar, then Delaney would speak up for him at his parole board hearing. He would say he was a reformed character. Who better to know than the arresting officer? People assume some kind of a mystical connection. Parole boards love all that shit. The guy would have walked. Except he didn’t get the job done. He underestimated his opponent. Possibly he was badly briefed.’

‘You’re admitting felony assault.’

‘You’ll never find me. I could be in California tomorrow.’

Aaron said, ‘Tell me who the girl was. And the boy in the sweatshirt. Show me you know what you’re talking about here.’

‘The boy and the girl were both stooges. Both blackmailed into playing a part. Probably the girl had just gotten busted. Maybe her second time. Maybe even her first. By the state DEA. By Delaney. She thinks he’s making up his mind about whether to drop it. He proposes a deal. All she has to do is carry a bag. He proposes a similar deal to the boy. A minor bust could go away. He could get back to Yale or Harvard or wherever he’s from with his record unblemished. Daddy need never know. All he has to do is run a little and grab a bag. The boy and the girl don’t know each other. They’re from different cases. Am I right so far?’

Aaron said, ‘What was in the bag?’

‘I’m sure the official report says it was either meth or OxyContin or money. One or the other. A delivery, or a payment.’

‘It was money,’ Aaron said. ‘It was a payment.’

‘How much?’

‘Thirty thousand dollars.’

‘Except it wasn’t. Think about it. What makes me exactly the same as the boy and the girl, and what makes me completely different?’

‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

‘Three people in the world could testify that bag was empty all along. The girl and the boy, because they had to carry it, so they knew it was light as a feather, and then later me, because it sailed up in the air a yard from my face, and I could see there was nothing in it. It was obvious.’

‘How are you different?’

‘He controls the boy and the girl. But he doesn’t control me. I’m a wild card running around in public saying the bag was empty. That’s what he heard. On the tape. That’s what he reacted to. He couldn’t let me say that. No one else was supposed to know the bag was empty. It could ruin everything. So he deleted the tape and then he tried to delete me.’

‘You’re arguing ahead of the facts.’

‘That’s why he asked how people get ahold of me. He found out he could put me in a potter’s field and no one would ever know.’

‘You’re speculating.’

‘There’s only one way this thing works. Delaney stole the thirty grand. He knew it was coming through. He’s DEA. He thought he could get away with it if he staged a freak accident. I mean, accidents happen, right? Like if your house sets on fire, and the money is all in the sofa. It’s an operating loss. It’s a rounding error. It’s the cost of doing business for these guys. They don’t trust their mothers, but they know that shit happens eventually. One time I read in the paper where some guy lost nearly a million dollars, all eaten up by mice in his basement. So Delaney figured he could get away with it. Without getting his legs broken. All he had to do was put on a bold face and stick to his story.’

‘Wait,’ Aaron said. ‘None of that makes sense.’

‘Unless.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Say it out loud. See how ridiculous it sounds.’

‘None of that makes sense, because OK, Delaney might know thirty grand is coming through, but how does he get access to it? How does he dictate who carries what in a bag? And when and where and by which route?’

‘Unless,’ Reacher said again.

‘This is crazy.’

‘Say it.’

‘Unless Delaney is walking on the dark side of the street.’

‘Don’t hide behind flowery language. Say it out loud.’

‘Unless Delaney is himself a link in the chain.’

‘Still kind of flowery.’

‘Unless Delaney is secretly a drug dealer as well as a DEA agent.’

‘Thirty grand might be about right for the kind of franchise fee he has to pay. For the kind of dealer he is. Which is not big. But not small-time either. Probably medium-sized, with a relatively civilized clientele. The work is easy. He’s well placed to help himself out with legal problems. He makes a decent living from it. Better than his pension is going to be. It was all good. But even so, he started to get greedy. This time he wanted to keep all the money for himself. He only pretended to pass along his boss’s share. The bag was empty from the get-go. But no one would know that. The police report would list thirty grand missing. Any gossip about what eyewitnesses saw would make it sound exactly like a freak robbery. His boss might write it off as genuine. Maybe Delaney planned to do it once a year. Kind of randomly. As an extra little margin.’