Lee Child - Make Me

Reacher said, “About what?”

“We have dead people in our house.”

“They won’t come out smelling of roses. So they’ll call it a righteous shooting. A home invasion, silenced weapons, threats of sexual violence. We’re not going to jail over this. We’re going to get a pat on the head instead. Except I don’t really care for that kind of thing. I would be just as happy not to be mentioned at all. Like I wasn’t here. You should take the credit. Play around with the gun. Get your prints on it again. They’ll give you a free year at the country club. You’ll get new patients. The badass doc.”

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t care how it turns out. They’ll never find me. But I would appreciate a head start. Ms. Chang and I have a lot to do. It would help us if you would sit tight for about thirty minutes, before you call 911. Tell them any story you want. Tell them you were in shock. Hence the delay.”

“Thirty minutes,” Evan said.

“Shock can last that long.”

“OK.”

“But when it comes to the story, tell them only two of them had guns.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to take one with me. And some cops can count that high.”

“OK, thirty minutes. Two guns. If I can. I’m not good with uniforms.”

Reacher looked at Emily and said, “Ma’am, I’m very sorry your big week got ruined.”

Emily said, “I owe you my thanks.”

“Think nothing of it.”

He headed out, behind Chang, who stopped to hug McCann’s sister, and to say, in response to her mute inquiries, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Then they closed the door on them and headed down the hallway, past the photographs, to the living room. First up was the first-base guy, but he had collapsed at an awkward angle. His suppressor was in the pool of blood coming from what was left of his head, and suppressors have wadding inside, or very fine baffles, either one of which would leak blood forever, so they passed the guy by. The third-base guy was a detour, so Chang ducked down to the second-base guy, the guy who had done all the talking, and she scooped up his Ruger, white collar or not.

And then she stopped.

She whispered, “Reacher, this one is still breathing.”

Reacher squatted by the horizontal figure. Chang knelt beside him. The guy was on his back, his legs splayed, his arms in disarray. He was unconscious. Or deep in shock, or in a coma. Or all of the above. His neck was a mess. Half of it was missing. He smelled of dirty clothes and sweat and the iron stink of blood. He smelled of death.

But there was faint respiration, and a thready pulse.

“How is that even possible?” Reacher whispered. “A piece the size of a porterhouse steak came flying out of him.”

“Obviously not a vital piece,” Chang whispered back.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. We can’t call the ambulance. They’ll bring the cops with them. They always do, for gunshot victims. We wouldn’t get a head start. But on the other hand this guy looks pretty bad. He needs a trauma surgeon, as soon as possible.”

“Evan is a doctor.”

“But what kind? He’d take one look and call the ambulance himself. Immediately. And then he’d call the cops himself. Also immediately. He’s shaky on the thirty-minute thing anyway.”

“We could walk out and leave the guy here. Who would know?”

“Too hard on Evan. Potentially. This guy might live thirty minutes. Then the story would leak. He’d be the doctor who ignored a dying man so he could go sit in his bedroom.”

Reacher put his fingertips high on the guy’s neck, on the intact portion, above the wound, one on each side, behind the ears, near the hinges of the jaw.

He kept them there.

Chang said, “What are you doing?”

“Compressing the arteries that feed his brain.”

“You can’t do that.”

“What, it was OK to murder him the first time, but not the second time?”

“It’s wrong.”

“It was right the first time, when he was a piece of shit who was about to rape you at gunpoint. Did he change? Did he suddenly become some kind of a saintly martyr we should rush straight to the hospital? When did that part happen?”

“How long will this take?”

“Not long. He wasn’t well to begin with.”

“This is so wrong.”

“We’re doing him a favor. Like a horse with a broken leg. No one could fix this neck.”

Her phone rang.

Loud and clear. Penetrating. She juggled it out and hunched away and answered it. She listened. She whispered. She clicked off.

Reacher said, “Who was that?”

“Westwood has landed at Sky Harbor.”

“Good to know.”

“I said we’d call him back.”

“Probably best.”

“The family will have heard the phone. They’ll know we’re still here.”

“They’ll think it’s one of these guys. In a pocket. They’ll ignore it.”

“Is that guy dead yet?”

“Nearly there. It’s peaceful. Like falling asleep.”

Then he sat back, and checked for a pulse, and didn’t find one.

He said, “Let’s go.”

Their car was on the curb a hundred yards away, in what had been the closest spot when they arrived. Then the tide had gone out and left it high and dry. It was all alone. Chang drove. She U-turned across the road and headed back the way they had come. The development was quiet. Stunned by heat. The air shimmered everywhere, blue and gold, like liquid.

The gatehouse had both barriers up. Both red-striped poles were vertical. Like a fat bird dressed for the oven. Wide open, both ways, in and out. No guard behind the glass.

Chang stopped the car.

She said, “Check it out.”

The blacktop was hot under Reacher’s feet. He could have fried an egg on it. He heard the buzz of flies six feet away. The sliding window was open. Where the guard leaned out to talk. I hope you folks have a wonderful afternoon . The AC was running hard, trying to cope.

The guard was on the floor. All tangled up around the legs of his stool. Short sleeve shirt. Mottled arms. Open eyes. He had been shot once in the chest and once in the head. Flies were feasting on his blood. Blue and iridescent. Crawling. Already laying eggs.

Reacher walked back to the car.

He said, “The old guy. Not going to get any older.”

“Makes me feel better about the assisted homicide.”

“Makes me wish I had found a butter knife in the kitchen and cut his head off.”

Chang drove out the gate, and took random lefts and rights. They heard no howling sirens in the distance. No commotion. Just the perpetual Phoenix traffic, three shiny lanes, like a slow river, rolling along forever.

“Where to?” she said.

“Let’s go find a cup of coffee. And there’s a call you need to make.”

They pulled in at a strip mall in Paradise Valley. There was a big-name coffee shop sandwiched between a store selling leather belts with silver buckles, and a store selling china plates with fancy patterns. Chang got iced coffee, and Reacher got hot. They sat at a sticky table in back.

Reacher said, “Tell Westwood to pick a hotel. Somewhere convenient, to suit his budget. Tell him we’ll join him there in two hours.”

“Why two hours?”

“Do you guys have a Phoenix office?”

“Of course. Lots of retired FBI in Phoenix.”

“We need local knowledge.”

“About the guys at the house?”

“About their boss. Who was also Hackett’s boss. A provider of outsourced security, for what is no doubt a varied roster of clients. The service economy at work. Physically he sounded like a big guy to me. On the phone. And then the guy who did all the talking at the house called him the fat man. Did you hear that? He was moaning about not getting paid, and not being able to renegotiate afterward, and he said those are the fat man’s rules. So we need a name. An Eastern European Phoenix-area crime boss who runs Eastern European muscle locally and people like Hackett elsewhere. And who could plausibly be called fat. Behind his back, presumably. Known locations would be good too.”