Diane Capri - Don't Know Jack

Gaspar asked, “How soon would you have heard if the 911 dispatcher had called you first?”

“Within a couple of minutes, probably.”

“Literally?”

“More or less,” Roscoe said. “Two minutes would have done it.”

“Eleven twenty-eight plus two is eleven-thirty exactly,” Gaspar said, and he met his partner's reflected gaze again. Kim nodded back.

Gaspar saw it too.

The Black Road intersection was about two miles shy of the interstate. Roscoe told Gaspar to turn left, southwest, onto the dirt road. About fifty feet in the road became a mess of washboard grading, dust, and previous washouts. Gaspar slowed the Blazer to forty, which still bounced them around more than Kim found comfortable. She asked, “What did the GHP officer find when he arrived at the crime scene?”

Roscoe said, “Sylvia came out onto the porch with her hands on her head before the GHP guy got out of his car. She didn’t say anything to him.”

“Textbook,” Gaspar said. “For a perp, I mean.”

“She worked with us a while and her husband was a cop. She knew what to do.” Roscoe peered ahead down the narrow alley between the Georgia pines. Kim could see nothing worth the stare.

Gaspar asked, “And then?”

“The GHP guy put her in handcuffs, confirmed Harry was dead, called for backup, medical examiner, crime scene, and paramedics.”

“And then he called Officer Brent,” Gaspar said.

“All using the radio,” Kim said.

“Right.”

“Anybody question Mrs. Black since GHP arrived?” Kim asked.

“She’s not talking. We’ll arrest her, take her back to our station. And go from there. Once we see what’s going on.”

Gaspar concentrated on navigating the deserted country road around its multiple hazards. All three of them were bounced around in their seats. Gaspar said, “I remember Margrave as a pretty well maintained place for a rural community. Lots of newer buildings and fresh paint when I was here last.”

“Things change,” Roscoe said, a little coldly.

“Just asking. Nothing personal.”

Roscoe didn’t smile. She just stared on down the dusty road. Looking for what, Kim didn’t know. There was nothing to see. Piney woods either side of the road hid everything beyond its ditches.

Kim asked, “What did Sylvia mean by not being able to take him anymore? Is she claiming abuse and self-defense?”

Roscoe said, “Hard to say before I talk to her. Crazy talk, possibly.”

Gaspar glanced back again and met Kim’s gaze with a look that confirmed Kim’s impression. Harry was abusive. Kim had no use for a wife-beater. None. Even less use for friends and co-workers who covered up. She wondered whether Harry was a drunken abuser or just a power tripper control freak. And whether battered spouse defense was a legal excuse for murder in Georgia.

Roscoe said, “About five more miles, I think. Harry’s family owned this land for generations. He built the house himself about twenty-five years ago. He liked being away from people. He said the quiet was restful.”

Gaspar looked back at Kim again. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing: Rest in Hell, Harry. You sick bastard.

They drove on. The car bounced and lurched, hitting potholes with regularity. Kim said, “Chief, we need to know about Reacher. Whatever you can tell us. Whatever you know. We need to find him. It’s important.”

It seemed to take Roscoe a couple of seconds to switch her mind back to Reacher. She asked, “What do you want him for?”

“He’s a potentially valuable asset. The FBI is telling you it needs him. Whose side are you on?”

Roscoe turned and stared a long time directly into Kim’s face. Still wary. Maybe searching for some hint that Kim could be trusted. The Blazer hit a big pothole. Roscoe smacked her head on the roof. She raised her hand to rub the sore spot, and glanced out the back window and realized where they were.

“Back up,” she said to Gaspar, and she pointed to a mailbox so obscured by weeds and kudzu only a previous visitor could find it. “The house is about a mile down that driveway you just passed.”

Deep dents marred every surface of the mailbox. Once painted white, now veined with rusty cracks, it dangled from its thick re-rod pole, held by a single remaining U-bolt and the grasping kudzu. The door to the mailbox was missing completely. “It wasn’t like that the last time I was here,” Roscoe said.

“When was that?” Kim asked.

“Couple of years ago, I guess. Maybe longer. Before they were married, I think.”

“Looks like extreme mailbox baseball,” Gaspar said. “Kids in a car with a bat. Vandalism, in other words. A federal crime, actually. If memory serves, $250,000 fine and three years in prison for each offense. And each blow counts as a separate offense.”

Kim asked Roscoe, “Was Black targeted in some way? Kids would have to be pretty determined to come all the way out here just to beat the snot out of a mailbox for the fun of it.”

“I didn’t hear anything about it,” Roscoe said. “I don’t know.”

The Blazer’s tires bounced from one hole to the next. Dead skunk perfume came in through the air vents. Kim held her breath. Then she saw a good-sized dirt lot and a pea-gravel driveway full of two GHP cruisers, two marked Margrave squad cars, an unmarked sedan with a portable bubble light on the dash, and a county ambulance. A coat of red dust already covered them all.

Kim asked, “Anything special you want us to do?”

Roscoe paused a moment and said, “Do whatever you think you should, I guess. I’ll catch up with you inside. Check in before you leave and we’ll see where we are.”

Then she said, “We’ll talk more about Reacher later. After I get this situation sorted out. OK?”

Kim watched as Roscoe followed a line of cracked sandstone slate pavers by taking a little hop from one to the next and over the dirt between them, like she was crossing stones in a running stream. Withered plants filled cracked red-dirt beds along each side of the pavers. Uncut yard weeds thrived, impersonating a lawn. Thirty feet ahead a frame shotgun style house rested on a cement block foundation. Its metal roof reflected the glare of the sun. Between the roof and the foundation were four windows cut into the walls, all grimy. A porch ran the twenty-foot width of the house. On one end, a gray weathered bench swing hung crooked on a rusty chain, and on the other end sat two white plastic dollar-store rockers with an overflowing ash tray between them.

Roscoe stepped over the last weed gap, up the single plank step to the porch, and entered the house through the open front door.

Kim stayed where she was.

Gaspar, too, seemed momentarily transfixed.

“What a hole,” he said. “My wife would never have moved out here in a million years. What kind of woman lives like this?”

“The killing kind, apparently,” Kim said. She reached into her bag and found her camera. Then she opened her door and stepped onto the hard red ground.

The first thing she noticed was the quiet noonday, bizarrely still. She was a city girl. Noise was normal; quiet was not.

Out in the woods, no one can hear you scream.

“Did you know?” she asked.

“Know what?” Gaspar said.

“Why he gave us the eleven-thirty deadline. Why he put us in that room at that time.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

“He wanted us to be there when the call came in. He wanted us out here at the crime scene. That how you read it?”

“Yes,” Gaspar said.

“What about Reacher?”

“Reacher’s irrelevant.”

“To what? This homicide? Or is the whole assignment bogus?”