Lee Child - Make Me

She said, “Nothing from Keever.”

“Try calling him again.”

“We both know he won’t answer.”

“Stranger things have happened. Once I had three police departments and the National Guard looking for a guy, and all of a sudden he showed up, fresh back from a vacation out of state.”

“We know Keever isn’t on vacation.”

“Try him anyway.”

Which she did, after a long reluctant pause, first on his home number, and then on his cell number.

There was no reply on either.

Reacher said, “Try the Los Angeles number again. From the piece of paper with the two hundred deaths.”

Chang nodded, keen to move on. She dialed, and held the phone to her ear.

This time the call was answered.

She said, a little surprised, “Good afternoon, sir. May I know who I’m speaking with?”

Which question must have been answered in the obvious manner, the same way Reacher had, with a previous inquiry: Who’s asking?

She said, “My name is Michelle Chang. I’m a private inquiry agent, based in Seattle. Previously I was with the FBI. Now I work with a man named Keever. I think he might have called you. Your number was found in his motel room.”

Reacher had no idea what was asked next, all the way out there in Los Angeles, but he pretty soon realized it must have been an inquiry as to how to spell Keever, because Chang said, “K-e-e-v-e-r.”

A long pause, and then a reply, almost certainly negative, because Chang said, “Can you be certain of that?”

And then there was a long conversation, mostly one-sided, definitely biased toward the LA guy doing all the talking, which Reacher couldn’t hear, and Chang’s facial expressions could have launched a thousand competing scenarios, so he got no real guidance from her. He had a sense the guy worked hard on one thing after another, episodically. And in great detail. Maybe he was an actor. Or a movie person. The context was unclear. In the end Reacher gave up trying to construct a plausible narrative, and just waited.

Eventually Chang said goodbye and clicked off the call, and took a breath, and a sip of iced coffee, and said, “His name is Westwood. He’s a journalist with the LA Times . Their science editor, in fact. Not that it’s a giant department, he says. Generally he writes in-depth features for their Sunday magazine. He says Keever never called him. His habit is to make a brief contemporaneous note of all incoming calls, straight into a secure database, because that’s the kind of thing journalists have to do these days, he says, in case their newspapers get sued. Or in case they want to sue their newspapers. But Keever isn’t in his database. Therefore he didn’t call.”

“This guy Westwood definitely isn’t the client, right?”

Chang shook her head. “He would have said so. I told him I was Keever’s partner.”

“When we found it you said the number would be either the client, or a source of independent corroboration, or a source of further information. So if it isn’t the client, it’s one of the other two. Maybe Keever planned to call him next. After calling you. Or maybe that was your role. Liaison, with Westwood. About whatever.”

“We have to face the likelihood that number was nothing to do with Keever. That note could have been in that room for months.”

“What is Westwood working on now?”

“A long piece about the origin of wheat. About how early wheat was cross-bred and became modern wheat. Sounds like a puff piece to me. As in, we already genetically modified it, so let’s go right ahead and do it some more.”

“Is that significant? As in, we’ve just seen a lot of wheat.”

“Enough to last a lifetime. But I’m voting with the defense attorneys. That note could have been in that room for a year. Or two. Any one of fifty guests could have dropped it. Or a hundred.”

Reacher said, “How private would Westwood’s number be?”

“Depends how recently he changed it. If it’s old, it’s out there. That’s how it is these days. Particularly for journalists. It’s on the internet somewhere, if you look hard enough. Which a lot of journalists like, in our experience. It gives them a network.”

Reacher drained his coffee, and said nothing.

Chang said, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking the defense attorneys would win their case. But a couple of jury members wouldn’t sleep easy. Because there’s an alternative story to be told, and just as convincing, they’re going to think, at four o’clock in the morning. It starts with your own first impression, some squirrelly guy with cash or handwritten checks, on a lunatic quest, because the wheat is going to kill two hundred people. Or something. And to prove it, talk to this journalist, who knows too. And crucially, here’s his number. Which proves something to us, about the guy. He digs up the number from the internet. He’s that kind of a guy. That note feels connected to me. The whole thing feels consistent. It’s some weird lone-guy obsession that carries no possible threat, until suddenly it does.”

Chang said, “We should get back on the road.”

The little green Ford had GPS in the dash and it found Keever’s house with no problem at all, in a faded suburban development north of Oklahoma City proper. It was a one-story ranch on a dead-end street. There was a young tree in the front yard, doing badly from lack of water. There was a driveway on the right side of the lot, ahead of a single-car garage. The roof was brown asphalt tile, and the siding was yellow vinyl. Not an architectural masterpiece, but the late sun made it pleasant, in its own way. It looked like a home. Reacher could imagine a big guy going in the door, kicking off his shoes, dumping himself down in a worn armchair, maybe turning on the ball game.

Chang parked in the driveway. They got out together and walked to the door. There was a bell button and a brass knocker, and they tried both, but they got no response from either. The door was locked. The handle wouldn’t turn at all. The view in the windows showed a dark interior.

Reacher asked, “Does he have family?”

“Divorced,” Chang said. “Like so many.”

“And not the type of guy who leaves a key under a flower pot.”

“And I’m sure he has a burglar alarm.”

“We drove a long way.”

“I know,” Chang said. “Let’s look around the back. With weather like this, maybe he left a window open. A crack, at least.”

The street was quiet. Just seven similar houses, three on a side, plus one at the dead end. No moving vehicles, no pedestrians. No eyes, no interest. Not really a Neighborhood Watch kind of place. It had a transient feel, but in slow motion, as if all seven houses were occupied by divorced guys taking a year or two to get back on their feet.

Keever’s back yard was fenced to head height with boards gone gray from the weather. There was a patch of lawn, nicely kept, and a patio with a wicker chair. The back wall of the house had the same yellow siding. There were four windows and a door. All the windows were shut. The door was solid at the bottom, and had nine little windows at the top. Like a farmhouse thing. It led to a narrow mud room ahead of a kitchen.

The land was flat, the houses were low, and the fence was high. They were not overlooked.

Chang said, “I’m trying to figure out the average police response time in a neighborhood like this. If he has a burglar alarm, I mean.”

Reacher said, “Somewhere between twenty minutes and never, probably.”

“So we could give ourselves ten minutes. Couldn’t we? In and out, fast and focused. I mean, it’s not really a crime, even. He and I work together. He wouldn’t press charges. Especially not under these circumstances.”