Ли Чайлд: No Middle Name

Aaron said, ‘I guess that’s something we’ll have to figure out.’

Their car was an old Crown Vic, worn but not sagging. Clean but not shiny. Reacher got in the back, which he didn’t mind, because it was a regular sedan. No bulletproof divider. No implications. And the best legroom of all, sitting sideways, with his back against the door, which he was happy to do, because he figured the rear compartment of a cop car was very unlikely to spontaneously burst open from gentle internal pressure. He felt sure the designers would have thought of that consideration.

The ride was short, to a dismal low-built concrete structure on the edge of town. There were tall antennas and satellite dishes on its roof. It had a parking lot with three unmarked sedans and a lone black-and-white cruiser all parked in a line, plus about ten more empty spaces, and the stove-in wreck of a blue SUV in one far corner. Detective Bush drove in and parked in a slot marked D2. They all got out. The weak spring sun was still hanging in there.

‘Just so you understand,’ Aaron said. ‘The less money we put in our buildings, the more we can put in catching the bad guys. It’s about priorities.’

‘You sound like the mayor,’ Reacher said.

‘Good guess. It was a selectman, making a speech. Word for word.’

They went inside. The place wasn’t so bad. Reacher had been in and out of government buildings all his life. Not the elegant marble palaces of D.C. necessarily, but the grimy beat-up places where government actually happened. And the county cops were about halfway up the scale, when it came to luxurious surroundings. Their main problem was a low ceiling. Which was simple bad luck. Even government architects succumbed to fashion sometimes, and back when atomic was a big word they briefly favoured brutalist structures made of thick concrete, as if the 1950s public would feel reassured the forces of order were protected by apparently nuclear-resistant facilities. But whatever the reason, the bunker-like mentality too often spread inside, with cramped airless spaces. Which was the county police department’s only real problem. The rest was pretty good. Basic, maybe, but a smart guy wouldn’t want it much more complicated. It looked like an OK place to work.

Aaron and Bush led Reacher to an interview room on a corridor parallel to the detectives’ pen. Reacher said, ‘We’re not doing this at your desk?’

‘Like on the TV shows?’ Aaron said. ‘Not allowed. Not any more. Not since 9/11. No unauthorized access to operational areas. You’re not authorized until your name appears as a cooperating witness in an official printed file. Which yours hasn’t yet, obviously. Plus our insurance works best in here. Sign of the times. If you were to slip and fall, we’d rather there was a camera in the room, to prove we were nowhere near you at the time.’

‘Understood,’ Reacher said.

They went in. It was a standard facility, perhaps made even more oppressive by a compressed, hunkered-down feeling, coming from the obvious thousands of tons of concrete all around. The inside face was unfinished, but painted so many times it was smooth and slick. The colour was a pale government green, not helped by ecological bulbs in the fixtures. The air looked seasick. There was a large mirror on the end wall. Without doubt a one-way window.

Reacher sat down facing it, on the bad-guy side of a crossways table, opposite Aaron and Bush, who had pads of paper and fistfuls of pens. First Aaron warned Reacher that both audio and video recording was taking place. Then Aaron asked Reacher for his full name, and his date of birth, and his Social Security number, all of which Reacher supplied truthfully, because why not? Then Aaron asked for his current address, which started a whole big debate.

Reacher said, ‘No fixed abode.’

Aaron said, ‘What does that mean?’

‘What it says. It’s a well-known form of words.’

‘You don’t live anywhere?’

‘I live plenty of places. One night at a time.’

‘Like in an RV? Are you retired?’

‘No RV,’ Reacher said.

Aaron said, ‘In other words you’re homeless.’

‘But voluntarily.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I move from place to place. A day here, a day there.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I like to.’

‘Like a tourist?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Where’s your luggage?’

‘I don’t use any.’

‘You have no stuff?’

‘I saw a little book in a store at the airport. Apparently we’re supposed to get rid of whatever doesn’t bring us joy.’

‘So you junked your stuff?’

‘I already had no stuff. I figured that part out years ago.’

Aaron stared down at his pad of paper, unsure. He said, ‘So what would be the best word for you? Vagrant?’

Reacher said, ‘Itinerant. Distributed. Transient. Episodic.’

‘Were you discharged from the military with any kind of diagnosis?’

‘Would that hurt my credibility as a witness?’

‘I told you, it’s like a credit score. No fixed address is a bad thing. PTSD would be worse. Defence counsel might speculate about your potential reliability on the stand. They might knock you down a point or two.’

‘I was in the 110th MP,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m not scared of PTSD. PTSD is scared of me.’

‘What was the 110th MP?’

‘An elite unit.’

‘How long have you been out?’

‘Longer than I was in.’

‘OK,’ Aaron said. ‘But this is not my call. It’s about the numbers now, pure and simple. Trials happen inside laptop computers. Special software. Ten thousand simulations. The majority trend. A couple of points either way could be crucial. No fixed address isn’t ideal, even without anything else.’

‘Take it or leave it,’ Reacher said.

They took it, like Reacher knew they would. They could never have too much. They could always lose some of it later. Perfectly normal. Plenty of good work got wasted, even on slam-dunk successful cases. So he ran through what he had seen, carefully, coherently, completely, beginning to end, left to right, near to far, and afterwards they all agreed that must have been about all of it. Aaron sent Bush to get the audio typed and printed, ready for Reacher’s signature. Bush left the room, and Aaron said, ‘Thank you again.’

‘You’re welcome again,’ Reacher said. ‘Now tell me your interest.’

‘Like you saw, it happened right in front of us.’

‘Which I’m beginning to think is the interesting part. I mean, what were the odds? Detective Bush parked in the D2 slot. Which means he’s number two on the detective squad. But he drove the car and now he’s doing your fetching and carrying. Which means you’re number one on the detective squad. Which means the two biggest names in the most glamorous division in the whole county police department just happened to be taking a stroll in the sun twenty yards behind a girl who just happened to get robbed.’

‘Coincidence,’ Aaron said.

Reacher said, ‘I think you were following her.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because you don’t seem to care what happened to her afterwards. Possibly because you know who she is. You know she’ll be back soon, to tell you all about it. Or you know where to find her. Because you’re blackmailing her. Or she’s a double agent. Or maybe she’s one of your own, working undercover. Whichever, you trust her to look out for herself. You’re not worried about her. It’s the bag you’re interested in. She was violently robbed, but you followed the bag, not her. Maybe the bag is important. Although I don’t see how. It looked empty to me.’

‘Sounds like a real big conspiracy going on, doesn’t it?’

‘It was your choice of words,’ Reacher said. ‘You thanked me for my help. My help in what exactly? A spontaneous split second emergency? I don’t think you would have used that phrase. You would have said wow, that was something, huh? Or an equivalent. Or just a raised eyebrow. As a bond, or an icebreaker. Like we’re just two guys, shooting the shit. But instead you thanked me quite formally. You said, Thank you very much for helping us out with that.’