Diane Capri: Don't Know Jack

He read all four files. There were photographs. Kim Otto was cute as anything. Asian and tiny. Reacher was a shadowy ex-military psychopath. A perfect prospect, all things considered. Trent née Roscoe and Finlay had been cops in a place in Georgia, probably where Reacher had first shown up again on the official radar after leaving the army. That place was a town south of Atlanta called Margrave, which was a place Gaspar had been before, which was maybe why he had gotten the assignment, not that the man who had mailed the phantom phone had a huge labor pool to pick from.

Gaspar tried to read more, but there was a headwind out of the north, and the engines were straining a little, and the vibration was making him sleepy. A precious gift, to which he yielded happily, his head on the window to his left, his right side for once mercifully uncompressed.

Carlos Gaspar woke up when the stewardess fussed at him about shutting his computer down before landing, but then she made up for it by hauling his bag down for him when they made the gate. He wheeled the bag for what seemed like a mile and then he stopped and telescoped the handle and picked the bag up like a regular guy when he saw the sidewalk ahead of him. He figured Otto would be waiting on the curb in a rental, and he didn’t want to make a bad first impression. He found her pretty quickly, in a Chevy Blazer. Her head was down. She was reading. An A-student. Asian, too. Maybe her first lead assignment. She wanted to be ready.

He tried the tailgate, but it was locked. He knocked on her window. She glanced up. She looked about eighteen. No more than five feet, no more than a hundred pounds, maybe less. She got out and he lifted his bag in and kept the pain out of his face. He offered to drive, which she seemed a little unsure about at first, but hey, she was number one and he was number two. Number two drove, simple as that. It was what it was. And they were already late. No time for a big discussion. He got in and she got in on his right and he took off.

Margrave was one hour and about a hundred years south of Atlanta. As always, traffic was bad at first and then it got easier. Strip malls changed to agriculture. Red earth, peanuts, the whole nine yards.

Georgia, for Christ’s sake.

Gaspar asked, “You tired?”

Kim Otto said, “A little.”

“Let me guess. He called you at four o’clock exactly.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he called me at three minutes past.”

“Were you OK with that?”

“I was already awake.”

Otto said, “I mean, are you OK with being number two?”

Gaspar said, “I’m OK with being number anything.”

“Really?”

Gaspar smiled to himself. Asian, a woman, ambitious. She wanted to go all the way. She wanted to be the Director. He wondered how she would deal with being a cripple. A charity case. Her head would explode, probably.

He said, “You know his name?”

“Whose name?”

“You know whose name. The guy who called you at four o’clock and the guy who called me at three minutes past.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know his name. Do you?”

“Yes,” he said. “You going to say it out loud?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

She asked, “Did you read the files?”

“I looked at the pictures.”

“Is that all?”

“No, of course I read them.”

“And?”

Audition time. First duty of a number two was to make his number one feel confident in his competence. Second duty was to get a little competition going. He said, “I’m not sure why we got the call at four in the morning. Seven would have been OK. Flights into Atlanta from other major U.S. cities are not rare. So what’s the rush? And the target file asks more questions than it answers. No IRS, nothing from the banks, no debts or loans or liens, no titles to houses or cars or boats or trailers, no arrest record, no convictions major or minor, no rent rolls, no landline or cell, ever, no ISP data, and he’s not in prison. He’s not in witness protection or undercover for any of the other three-letter agencies, or why would we be looking for him? We’d already know where he is. So either his file is mostly redacted, or he’s the most under-the-radar guy who ever lived.”

Otto was quiet for a moment. Bull’s-eye , Gaspar thought. Home run . He’d seen everything she had. He’d missed nothing.

“I’m not sure I like him,” she said.

“We don’t have to like him.”

They drove onward into the heartland. The Blazer was an underpowered piece of shit, and the tires were all wrong for concrete. Gaspar wished Otto had asked for a sedan. He would have.

She asked, “Can a person be so far under the radar?”

He said, “It’s difficult. But if you put your mind to it, I imagine it’s possible.”

“You think he’s a good candidate?”

“Ideal. Otherwise we wouldn't be here.”

“I’m not sure I like that either.”

“Above our pay grade,” Gaspar said.

He came off the Interstate, down the ramp, around the cloverleaf. Fourteen miles to town. On the right, a burned-out warehouse. It had been that way for years, for as long as Gaspar could remember. Then on the left, much later, a diner. Then the police station, rebuilt quick and dirty after a fire. He pulled in and parked. They went inside. There was a sergeant behind a desk. Gaspar stepped up and said, “We need to speak with Chief Roscoe. Or Trent. I’m not sure what she goes by now.”

Behind him, Otto tapped her foot. Quietly, but he heard it. She was annoyed. She had wanted to speak first. But tough shit. It was the number two’s job to clear the way. Everyone knew that.

The guy behind the desk asked, “Who are you?”

Gaspar said, “FBI.” He pulled his badge and held it out.

The guy behind the desk said, “Down the hall, second on the right.”

Kim Otto watched Carlos Gaspar’s retreating back as he hustled toward Chief Roscoe’s office, widening the physical distance between them. The big clock on the wall above the sergeant’s head showed ten past eleven. Their first objective had been precise: arrive in Roscoe’s office before 11:30 a.m. Done. With twenty minutes to spare.

So now what? Build the Reacher file, obviously, but aside from the boss’s order to start with Roscoe, they didn’t know what they were looking for, or how they might find it, and it was always a mistake to get ahead of the intel. But given Reacher’s talent for trouble, it was likely Chief Roscoe possessed not only relevant but potentially important knowledge about him, which she might reveal in a well conducted personal interview, but not otherwise. These things needed patience. And thought. But long before Kim even reached the office door, Gaspar rapped his knuckles on the wood and opened it up without waiting for a reply.

“Chief Roscoe? Sorry to barge in,” he said, as he barreled across the threshold sounding not the least bit sorry. “I’m Carlos Gaspar, FBI.”

Kim got there just as Margrave Police Chief Beverly Roscoe was rising from the oversized brown leather chair behind her desk. She was taller than Kim, but then, who wasn’t? And she was more attractive than the headshot in her file, but again, who wasn’t? She was slim and not at all flatchested. She had a caramel complexion. She had dark curly hair cut with a big-city style, falling all over her face. She had remarkable dark eyes. They were accented like a child’s drawing of the sun by whiter skin dashing out toward her temples. Maybe some Native American or African-American heritage. Roscoe’s family was said to have lived in north Georgia for more than a hundred years; either ethnicity was plausible.