Ли Чайлд - Этаж смерти with W_cat

[ 1233] But the street was empty. I walked into Hubble’s driveway. The taxi turned and drove back to town. Then it was silent. That heavy silence you get in a quiet street on a hot, quiet day. I rounded the big banks of garden. There was nobody there. No police cars, no ambulances, no shouting. No clattering gurneys, no gasps of horror. No police photographers, no tape sealing off the access.

[ 1234] The big dark Bentley was parked up on the gravel. I walked past it on my way to the house. The front door crashed open. Charlie Hubble ran out. She was screaming. She was hysterical. But she was alive.

[ 1235] “Hub’s disappeared,” she screamed.

[ 1236] She ran over the gravel. Stood right in front of me.

[ 1237] “Hub’s gone,” she screamed. “He’s disappeared. I can’t find him.”

[ 1238] It was just Hubble on his own. They’d taken him and dumped him somewhere. Someone had found the body and called the police. A screaming, gagging phone call. The cluster of cars and ambulances was there. Not here on Beckman. Somewhere else. But it was just Hubble on his own.

[ 1239] “Something’s wrong,” Charlie wailed. “This prison thing. Something’s gone wrong at the bank. It must be that. Hub’s been so uptight. Now he’s gone. He’s disappeared. Something’s happened, I know it.”

[ 1240] She screwed her eyes tight shut. Started screaming. She was losing it. Getting more and more hysterical. I didn’t know how to handle her.

[ 1241] “He got back late last night,” she screamed. “He was still here this morning. I took Ben and Lucy to school. Now he’s gone. He hasn’t gone to work. He got a call from his office telling him to stay home, and his briefcase is still here, his phone is still here, his jacket is still here, his wallet is still here, his credit cards are in it, his driver’s license is in it, his keys are in the kitchen. The front door was standing wide open. He hasn’t gone to work. He’s just disappeared.”

[ 1242] I stood still. Paralyzed. He’d been dragged out of there by force and killed. Charlie sagged in front of me. Then she started whispering to me. The whispering was worse than the screaming.

[ 1243] “His car is still here,” she whispered. “He can’t have walked anywhere. He never walks anywhere. He always takes his Bentley.”

[ 1244] She waved vaguely toward the back of the house.

[ 1245] “Hub’s Bentley is green,” she said. “It’s still in the garage. I checked. You’ve got to help us. You’ve got to find him. Mr. Reacher, please. I’m asking you to help us. Hub’s in trouble, I know it. He’s vanished. He said you might help. You saved his life. He said you knew how to do things.”

[ 1246] She was hysterical. She was pleading. But I couldn’t help her. She would know that soon enough. Baker or Finlay would come up to the house very soon. They would tell her the shattering news. Probably Finlay would handle it. Probably he was very good at it. Probably he had done it a thousand times in Boston. He had dignity and gravity. He would break the news, gloss over the details, drive her down to the morgue to identify the body. The morgue people would shroud the corpse with heavy gauze to hide the appalling wounds.

[ 1247] “Will you help us?” Charlie asked me.

[ 1248] I decided not to wait with her. I decided to go down to the station house. Find out details like where and when and how. But I’d come back with Finlay. This was my fault, so I should come back.

[ 1249] “You stay here,” I said. “You’ll have to lend me your car, OK?”

[ 1250] She rooted in her bag and pulled out a big bunch of keys. Handed them to me. The car key had a big letter B embossed on it. She nodded vaguely and stayed where she was. I stepped over to the Bentley and slid into the driver’s seat. Backed it up and swung it down the curving driveway. Glided down Beckman in silence. Made the left onto Main Street up toward the station house.

[ 1251] THERE WERE CRUISERS AND UNMARKED UNITS SPRAWLED right across the police parking lot. I left Charlie’s Bentley at the curb and stepped inside. They were all milling around the open area. I saw Baker, Stevenson, Finlay. I saw Roscoe. I recognized the backup team from Friday. Morrison wasn’t there. Nor was the desk guy. The long counter was unattended. Everybody was stunned. They were all vague and staring. Horrified. Distracted. Nobody would talk to me. They looked over bleakly. Didn’t really look away, it was like they didn’t see me at all. There was total silence. Finally Roscoe came over. She’d been crying. She walked up to me. Pressed her face against my chest. She was burning up. She put her arms around me and held on.

[ 1252] “It was horrible,” she said. Wouldn’t say any more.

[ 1253] I walked her around to her desk and sat her down. Squeezed her shoulder and stepped over toward Finlay. He was sitting on a desk, looking blank. I nodded him over to the big office in back. I needed to know, and Finlay was the guy who would tell me. He followed me into the office. Sat down in the chair in front of the desk. Where I had sat in handcuffs on Friday. I sat behind the desk. Roles reversed.

[ 1254] I watched him for a while. He was really shaken up. I went cold inside all over again. Hubble must have been left in a hell of a mess to be getting a reaction like that from Finlay. He was a twenty-year man from a big city. He must have seen all there is to see. But now he was really shaken up. I sat there and burned with shame. Sure, Hubble, I’d said, you look safe enough to me.

[ 1255] “So what’s the story?” I said.

[ 1256] He lifted his head up with an effort and looked at me.

[ 1257] “Why should you care?” he said. “What was he to you?”

[ 1258] A good question. One I couldn’t answer. Finlay didn’t know what I knew about Hubble. I’d kept quiet about it. So Finlay didn’t see why Hubble was so important to me.

[ 1259] “Just tell me what happened,” I said.

[ 1260] “It was pretty bad,” he said. Wouldn’t go on.

[ 1261] He was worrying me. My brother had been shot in the head. Two big messy exit wounds had removed his face. Then somebody had turned his corpse into a bag of pulp. But Finlay hadn’t fallen apart over that. The other guy had been all gnawed up by rats. There wasn’t a drop of blood left in him. But Finlay hadn’t fallen apart over that, either. Hubble was a local guy, which made it a bit worse, I could see that. But on Friday, Finlay hadn’t even known who Hubble was. And now Finlay was acting like he’d seen a ghost. So it must have been some pretty spectacular work.

[ 1262] Which meant that there was some kind of a big deal going down in Margrave. Because there’s no point in spectacular work unless it serves a purpose. The threat of it beforehand works on the guy himself. It had certainly worked on Hubble. He had taken a lot of notice of it. That’s the point of a threat. But to actually carry out something like that has a different point. A different purpose. Carrying it out is not about the guy himself. It’s about backing up the threat against the next guy in line. It says, see what we did to that other guy? That’s what we could do to you. So by doing some spectacular work on Hubble, somebody had just revealed there was a high-stakes game going down, with other guys waiting next in line, right there in the locality.

[ 1263] “Tell me what happened, Finlay,” I said again.

[ 1264] He leaned forward. Cupped his mouth and nose with his hands and sighed heavily into them.

[ 1265] “OK,” he said. “It was pretty horrible. One of the worst I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a few, let me tell you. I’ve seen some pretty bad ones, but this was something else. He was naked. They nailed him to the wall. Six or seven big carpentry nails through his hands and up his arms. Through the fleshy parts. They nailed his feet to the floor. Then they sliced his balls off. Just hacked them off. Blood everywhere. Pretty bad, let me tell you. Then they slit his throat. Ear to ear. Bad people, Reacher. These are bad people. As bad as they come.”