Lee Child - Running Blind

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know,” McGuire said.

Reacher turned around. “It means I’m not an Army cop, I’m not a civilian cop, in fact I’m not anything at all.”

“So?”

“So there’s no comeback on me. No disciplinary procedures, no pension to lose, no nothing.”

“So?”

“So if I leave you walking on crutches and drinking through a straw the rest of your life, there’s nothing anybody can do to me. And we got no witnesses in here.”

“What do you want?”

“Second factor is whatever the big guy says he’ll do to you, I can do worse.”

“What big guy?”

Reacher smiled. McGuire’s hands bunched into fists. Heavy biceps, big shoulders.

“Now it gets sophisticated,” Reacher said. “You need to concentrate real hard on this part. Third factor is, if you give me the guy’s name, he goes away somewhere else, forever. You give me his name, he can’t get to you. Not ever, you understand?”

“What name? What guy?”

“The guy you were paying off with half your take.”

“No such guy.”

Reacher shook his head. “We’re past that stage now, OK? We know there’s such a guy. So don’t make me smack you around before we even get to the important part.”

McGuire tensed up. Breathed hard. Then he quieted down. His body slackened slightly and his eyes narrowed again.

“So concentrate,” Reacher said. “You think that to rat him out puts you in the shit. But you’re wrong. What you need to understand is, you rat him out and actually it makes you safe, the whole rest of your life, because people are looking at him for a bunch of things a whole lot worse than ripping off the Army.”

“What’s he done?” McGuire asked.

Reacher smiled. He wished the video cameras had sound. The guy exists . Leighton would be dancing around the office.

“The FBI thinks he killed four women. You give me his name, they’ll put him away forever. Nobody’s even going to ask him about anything else.”

McGuire was silent. Thinking about it. It wasn’t the speediest process Reacher had ever seen.

“Two more factors,” he said. “You tell me right now, I’ll put in a good word for you. They’ll listen to me, because I used to be one of them. Cops stick together, right? I can get you easy time.”

McGuire said nothing.

“Last factor,” Reacher said gently. “You need to understand, sooner or later you’ll tell me anyway. It’s just a question of timing. Your choice. You can tell me right now, or you can tell me in a half hour, right after I’ve broken your arms and legs and I’m about to snap your spine.”

“He’s a bad guy,” McGuire said.

Reacher nodded. “I’m sure he’s real bad. But you need to prioritize. Whatever he says he’s going to do, that’s theoretical, way off in the future, and like I told you, it isn’t going to happen anyway. But what I’m going to do, it’s going to happen right now. Right here.”

“You ain’t going to do nothing,” McGuire said.

Reacher turned and picked up the wooden stool. Flipped it upside down and held it chest high with his hands around two of the legs. Took a firm backhand grip and bunched his shoulders and pulled steadily. Then he breathed hard and snapped his elbows back and the legs tore away from the rungs. The rungs clattered to the floor. He reversed the stool and held the seat in his left hand and splintered a leg free with his right. Dropped the wreckage and retained the leg. It was about a yard long, the size and weight of a ball bat.

“Now you do the same,” he said.

McGuire tried hard. He turned over his own stool and grasped the legs. His muscles bunched and the tattoos swelled, but he got nowhere with it. He just stood there, holding the stool upside down.

“Too bad,” Reacher said. “I tried to make it fair.”

“He was Special Forces,” McGuire said. “He was in Desert Storm. He’s real tough.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Reacher said. “He resists, the FBI will shoot him down. End of problem.”

McGuire said nothing.

“He won’t know it came from you,” Reacher said. “They’ll make it look like he left some evidence behind. ”

McGuire said nothing. Reacher swung the leg of the stool.

“Left or right?” he asked.

“What?” McGuire said.

“Which arm you want me to break first?”

"LaSalle Kruger,” McGuire said. "Supply battalion CO. He’s a colonel.”

STEALING THE PHONE was candy from a baby, but the reconnaissance is a bitch. Timing it right was the first priority. You needed to wait for complete darkness, and you wanted to wait for the daytime cop’s final hour. Because the cop is dumber than the Bureau guy, and because somebody’s last hour is always better than somebody else’s first hour. Attention will have waned. Boredom will have set in. His eyes will have glazed and he’ll be thinking ahead to a beer with his buddies or a night in front of the television with his wife. Or however the hell he spends his downtime.

So your window extends to about forty minutes, say seven to seven-forty. You plan it in two halves. First the house, then the surrounding area. You drive back from the airport and you approach on the through road. You drive straight through the junction three streets from her house. You stop at a hikers’ parking area two hundred yards farther north. There’s a wide gravel trail leading east up the slope of Mount Hood. You get out of your car and you turn your back on the trail and you work your way west and north through lightly wooded terrain. You’re about level with your first position, but on the other side of her house, behind it, not in front of it.

The terrain means the houses don’t have big yards. There are slim cultivated strips behind the buildings, then fences, then steep hillside covered in wild brush. You ease through the brush and come out at her fence. Stand motionless in the dark and observe. Drapes are drawn. It’s quiet. You can hear a piano playing, very faintly. The house is built into the hillside, and it’s at right angles to the street. The side is really the front. The porch runs all the way along it. Facing you is a wall dotted with windows. No doors. You ease along the fence and check the other side, which is really the back of the house. No doors there either. So the only ways in are the front door on the porch, and the garage door facing the street. Not ideal, but it’s what you expected. You’ve planned for it. You’ve planned for every contingency.

"OK, COLONEL KRUGER,” Leighton said. "We’re on your ass now.”

They were back in the duty office, damp from the jog through the nighttime rain, high with elation, flushed with cold air and success. Handshakes had been exchanged, high fives had been smacked, Harper had laughed and hugged Reacher. Now Leighton was scrolling through a menu on his computer screen, and Reacher and Harper were sitting side by side in front of his desk on the old upright chairs, breathing hard. Harper was still smiling, basking in relief and triumph.

“Loved that business with the stool,” she said. “We watched the whole thing on the video screen.”

Reacher shrugged.

“I cheated,” he said. “I chose the right stool, is all. I figured visiting time, that sergeant sits on the one by the door, wriggles around a little because he’s bored. Guy that size, the joints were sure to be cracked. The thing practically fell apart.”

“But it looked real good.”

“That was the plan. First rule is to look real good.”

“OK, he’s in the personnel listings,” Leighton said. "LaSalle Kruger, bird colonel, right there.”

He tapped the screen with his nail. It made the same glassy thunk they’d heard before. Like a bottle.