Ли Чайлд - No Middle Name

Times two for a woman in a man’s world.

So off I went.

I got the worst car, obviously, with no GPS on the dash and no maps in the glove box, but I found the hospital easily enough. It was a large beige building southeast of downtown. I showed my shiny new shield and was directed to the fifth floor. Not exactly the ICU, they said, but the same kind of thing. A big enough deal that I had to turn off my phone.

A nurse met me there and took me to a doctor, who had threads of silver in her hair and looked like brains and money. She said I had wasted a trip. The victim was asleep and wasn’t going to wake up any time soon, because he was sedated with a custom mix that sounded pretty good to me. But I was new, and I had a report to write, so I asked for her perspective.

‘Gunshot wound,’ she said, like I was slow in the head. ‘In the left side, up under the arm, broke a rib and tore some muscle. Not very nice. Hence the painkillers.’

‘Calibre?’ I asked.

‘No idea,’ she said. ‘Not a BB gun, anyway.’

I asked to see the guy.

‘You want to watch him sleep?’

‘I have a report to write.’

She was cautious about infection, but she let me look in through a window. I saw a guy, fast asleep on a cot. A very distinctive guy. Short messy hair, plain features. He was on his back. The sheet was down at his hips. He was naked from the waist up. He had a pressure dressing high on his left side. He had tubes in the back of his hand, and a clip on his finger. I could see a sinus rhythm on his monitor. It was beeping away, strong and powerful. As it should. Because the guy was huge. Almost bigger than the cot itself. He was easily six-five and two-fifty. A giant. Hands like catchers’ mitts. A slab of a man. He was ridged with muscle. Not old. But not young, either. He looked worn and battered. He had scars here and there. A big old thing low down on his gut, like a huge white starfish, with thick, crude stitches. An old bullet hole in his chest. A .38, almost certainly. An eventful life. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

He looked to be sleeping quite peacefully.

I asked, ‘Any idea what happened?’

‘Probably not self-inflicted,’ the doctor said. ‘Unless he’s a contortionist.’

‘I mean, didn’t he tell you anything?’

‘He came in conscious, but he didn’t say a word.’

I asked, ‘Did he have ID?’

‘His stuff is in a bag,’ the doctor said. ‘At the nurses’ station.’

It was a very small bag. Clear plastic, with a zipper. Like people use in the airport line. At the bottom was loose change. A couple of bucks. There was a wad of folding money. A couple of hundred, possibly. Maybe more. It would depend on the denominations. There was an ATM card. And a creased old passport. And finally a travel toothbrush, reversed for a pocket, with the bristles inside a plastic tube.

‘Is that it?’ I asked.

‘You think we’re stealing from our patients?’

‘Mind if I take a look?’ I said.

‘You’re the cop,’ the doctor said.

The ATM card was made out to J. Reacher . It had another year to run. The passport had expired three years previously. It was made out to Jack Reacher . Not John. Jack must have been on his birth certificate. No middle name, which was unusual in America. The photograph showed an approximate version of the face on the pillow. It was thirteen years younger, and animated with an expression halfway between patient and impatient, as if the guy was prepared to give the photographer the time he needed, but not a second longer.

No driver’s licence, no credit cards, no cell phone.

I asked, ‘What was he wearing?’

‘Cheap things,’ the doctor said. ‘We burned them.’

‘Why?’

‘Biohazard. I’ve seen better clothes on bums in the park.’

‘Is he a transient?’

‘I told you, he didn’t say a word. He could be an eccentric billionaire, for all I know.’

‘He looks in good shape.’

‘You mean apart from being bandaged up in a hospital bed?’

‘I mean, generally.’

‘Healthy as a horse. Strong as a horse.’

‘When will he wake up?’

‘Tonight, maybe. I dosed him like a horse, too.’

I went back at the end of my shift. Unpaid, but I was new and I wanted to make a good impression. There had been nothing on the wires about a shooting incident. No rumours. No other victims, no witnesses, no 911 calls. Which I gathered was not unusual. The city was like that. The underbelly had a life of its own. Like Vegas. What happened there stayed there.

I spent some time with the databases, too. Reacher was not a common name, and I figured the Jack-none-Reacher combination was likely to be much less common. But there was no real data. Or to put it the other way, all the data was negative. The guy had no phone, no car, no boat, no trailer, no credit history, no home, and no insurance. No nothing. There were some military records, from way back. He had been an army cop, mostly in the Criminal Investigation Division, an officer, decorated multiple times, which at first gave me a warm fellow feeling, and then it worried me. Thirteen years’ honourable service, and now he was homeless, getting shot in the side, wearing clothes so toxic the hospital had to incinerate them. Not what a new detective wants to hear, on her first day on the job.

It was dark when I got back to the hospital, but up on the fifth floor I found the big guy awake. I knew his name, so I introduced myself, to balance things up. To be polite. I told him I had a report to write. I told him it was required. I asked him what had happened.

He said, ‘I don’t remember.’

Which was plausible. Physical trauma can induce retrograde amnesia. But I didn’t believe it. I got the feeling he was giving me a rote answer. I began to see why his file was so thin. A person has to work hard to stay under the radar. Which was OK with me, to be honest. I got my promotion because I’m a good interrogator. And I like a challenge. An old boyfriend said I should have it on my gravestone: Everyone talks .

I said, ‘Help me out here.’

He looked back at me with clear blue eyes. Whatever painkiller cocktail they were using wasn’t doing him any harm in the cognition department. His gaze was unworried and friendly, but also bleak and dangerous, wise and primitive, warm and predatory. I got the feeling he knew a hundred ways to help me, and a hundred ways to kill me.

I said, ‘I’m new on the job. Today is my first day. I’m going to get my butt kicked if I don’t deliver.’

‘Which would be a shame,’ he said. ‘Because it’s a very cute butt.’

Which would have gotten him sensitivity training on the job, but I couldn’t take offence. He was lying there wounded and helpless, half naked, radiating a lazy kind of charm.

‘You were a cop,’ I said. ‘I saw your file. You worked in a team. Did you ever save someone’s ass?’

‘Time to time,’ he said.

‘So save mine now.’

He said nothing.

‘How did it start?’

‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘Don’t you have a home to go to?’

‘Don’t you?’

He didn’t answer.

‘How did it start?’ I asked again.

He sighed and took a breath and said it started like things usually start. Which was to say they usually don’t start at all. He said most places he went were peaceful and quiet. He said most places, nothing happens.

I asked him what he meant.

He said big cities, small towns, he went about his business and nobody knew. He said he ate his meals, and slept, and showered and changed, and saw what he saw. Sometimes he got lucky with an hour’s conversation. Sometimes he got lucky with a night’s companionship. But mostly nothing happened. He said he had a quiet life. He said he could go months between days worth forgetting.