Diane Capri - Don't Know Jack

Kim felt the Blazer’s speed slow. Flashing lights proclaimed road construction ahead. Outbound traffic from Atlanta was barely moving. Inbound traffic moved slightly faster.

Then it stopped altogether.

“Okay, including the obvious, then.” Gaspar slid the transmission into park and moved his right leg as if cramping had returned. Again, Kim would have asked about the leg, but she didn’t want to go down another contentious road.

Gaspar said, “Whoever shot Mr. Black knew where to put the bullets. The two shots to the head would have done the job. The other five were pure vengeance.”

She looked up from the screen. “For what?”

He considered the question for a while. Finally he said, “Now that’s the sixty four dollar question, isn’t it?”

“That, and why the Leach brothers ran us out of town.”

“You think the two are related?”

“The Leach brothers?”

He shot her the O h please look he’d learned from his teenagers. “Black’s murder and our close encounter with the Leach brothers.”

“You think they’re not?”

“I see what you mean about being obtuse,” he said.

Traffic began to move again, but barely. Kim’s internet connection remained strong for five miles. Long enough to download four large articles before she lost the signal again. She scanned the pieces quickly, seeking new facts.

When the construction zone ended, the road widened to four lanes again, and Gaspar punched the Blazer back to eighty miles an hour. The cell signal cut out. Kim barely noticed, so engrossed was she in the Atlanta Constitution article she’d pulled up.

“Are you reading a novel over there or what?”

“Strictly non-fiction,” she said.

“Interesting?”

“Well, I think I know why Mary the waitress freaked out when you gave her that hundred dollar bill.”

They headed for Hartsfield Airport, south of the city. Gaspar chose a Renaissance Hotel and parked the Blazer within easy sprinting distance of a side entrance. He said, “Is this OK? They’ve got a bar and a restaurant, which most of these airport racks don’t have. We wouldn’t need to go out again tonight.”

The rain had stopped about fifteen miles earlier, but the air was still heavy with moisture and small lakes had collected in every low spot. The temperature had dropped after the storm, too. Kim was exhausted. Gaspar looked as bad as she felt.

“Sure,” she said. “Perfect.”

He got out of the Blazer and limped to the back and lifted the hatch. They pulled out their bags. She wheeled hers inside, but he carried his. Macho man. She sighed, too tired to deal with him.

They registered, and they requested and received second floor billets close to the emergency stairwell nearest the Blazer. Then they went up in the elevator to adjacent rooms.

“Let’s meet for dinner,” Kim said. She checked her watch. Six o’clock now. “Maybe eight-thirty?”

She wanted a nap, and a shower, and then some time to work. She’d acquired a lot of data.

“I’ll knock on your door at 8:30,” he said.

“Perfect.” But almost before she got the word out, she felt the boss’s cell phone vibrating in her front pocket. After three tries, she swiped her key correctly and released the lock. She pushed the door open with her hip, wheeled her bags inside, closed the door, and lifted the phone to her ear. By then it had vibrated seven times.

“Otto,” she said, breathless. Out of habit she walked through to the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. No crawly bugs. No surveillance. No ambush.

“I didn’t expect you to be back in Atlanta so soon.”

The implied question stopped her room inspection cold. And at first it confused her. Then she realized the cell phone must have an active GPS monitoring chip in it. She wasn’t surprised, exactly. She was used to being monitored while on duty. Knowing someone was watching her had always made her feel safer. Serious things could happen to agents out of electronic range. Unfixable things.

But she didn’t feel reassured right then. She felt unsettled. Mostly because she hadn’t worked out what she would tell him and what she wouldn’t yet. She looked at herself in the bathroom’s vanity mirror. Did she sound as bedraggled as she appeared?

She stood up straight, squared her shoulders, looked her reflection in the eye. She imagined that he was on the other side of the mirror, watching her; that he saw what she saw as they talked. She tried to create a positive impression.

He asked, “You’re making good progress, then?”

“Just the opposite, I’m afraid.” She’d stick to the fiction he’d given her about this assignment until he tasked her otherwise. Or until she figured out his real agenda. And the truth was that she’d learned almost nothing about Reacher that she hadn’t known before she arrived in Margrave.

“How so?” he asked.

“Chief Roscoe was called to a homicide, so our interview was cut short. We’re going back tomorrow.”

“Was she cooperative?”

Translation: he’d known Roscoe wouldn’t be cooperative.

“She didn’t have time to tell us much. She said Reacher had been arrested and charged with murder back then. She was the intake officer. That’s how she met him. She said he wasn’t guilty. She said he saved her life.”

“Does she know where he is?”

“She said not.”

“You believe her?”

Kim thought about Roscoe’s reaction to Reacher’s photograph, to learning he was alive. Roscoe wasn’t faking then, Kim was certain. “I do believe her. Yes.”

She listened to a few moments of silence; waited for him to state his pleasure.

“Who died?”

“Sorry?”

“Roscoe’s homicide.”

Had she been wrong? Did he truly not know? She tamed her puzzled mind, now persuaded he was testing her. But immediately wondered: testing her for what?

“Margrave Police Sergeant Harry Black.”

“Who killed him?”

Kim thought about the question on its merits and his motivation for asking. She decided she was too tired to think along two tracks at once. “I’m not sure.”

“Why?”

She took a deep breath. She hadn’t meant to reveal her assumptions until she’d been over everything and settled it in her own mind. But there was no possibility of evading him, even if she’d wanted to.

He knew where she’d been. The cell had been in her pocket from the time she left her apartment. He monitored her movements, and Gaspar’s too. And, if she was right, he’d sent her to Margrave to be his eyes on the ground at that homicide scene. This was really what he wanted to know. Failure was not an option. She had to deliver. But deliver what?

“I haven’t been able to go over the evidence yet.”

“What evidence?”

“We took photos while we were there. We made observations.”

“Why?”

What should she say? Because she believed he’d sent her there to do exactly that? Because she was ambitious and wanted to impress him, to get promoted, to have his job and go beyond it one day? Scratch that. What was she thinking? She shook the cobwebs out of her mind.

“Roscoe asked us to help, and we were trying to gain her trust, so she would answer our questions about Reacher. She was short-handed. She needed the help.” Not precisely true, but not much of a lie, either.

As if he was actually watching her through a one-way mirror, could see her expressions, gauge her veracity, he offered only silence for too long. Was her fanciful idea true? Could he see her right now? If he knew she was there, had he arranged her room assignment in order to watch her? Anxiety crept up from somewhere, raising her internal security alert level to red again. No. That was not even possible. Was it? And what was he thinking?