Lee Child - The Hard Way

“What do you do here?” Reacher asked.

“First tell me what you do there,” Patti said.

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Do you work for Lane?”

“No, I don’t.”

Patti Joseph smiled.

“I didn’t think you did,” she said. “I told Brewer, you’re not one of them. You’re not like them. You weren’t Special Forces, were you?”

“How did you know?”

“You’re too big. You wouldn’t have made it through the endurance hazing. Big men never do.”

“I was an MP.”

“Did you know Lane in the service?”

“No, I didn’t.”

Patti Joseph smiled again.

“I thought not,” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be there.”

“Who is Brewer?”

“NYPD.” She pointed at the notebook and the pen and the camera and the binoculars. A big, sweeping gesture. “I do all this for him.”

“You’re watching Lane and his guys? For the cops?”

“For myself, mostly. But I check in.”

“Why?”

“Because hope springs eternal.”

“Hope of what?”

“That he’ll slip up, and I’ll get something on him.”

Reacher stepped closer to the window and glanced at the notebook. The handwriting was neat. The last entry read: 2014 hrs. Burke returns alone, no bag, in black BMW OSC-23, enters TDA .

“TDA?” Reacher asked.

“The Dakota Apartments,” Patti said. “It’s the building’s official name.”

“You ever see Yoko?”

“All the time.”

“You know Burke by name?”

“Burke was around when Anne was there.”

The last-but-one entry read: 1859 hrs. Burke and Venti leave TDA in black BMW OSC-23, with bag, Venti concealed in rear .

“Venti?” Reacher asked.

“That’s what I’ve been calling you. Like a code name.”

“Why?”

“Venti is the largest cup that Starbucks sells. Bigger than the others.”

“I like coffee,” Reacher said.

“I could make some.”

Reacher turned away from the window. The apartment was a small one-bedroom. Plain, neat, painted. Probably worth the best part of a million bucks.

“Why are you showing me all this?” he asked.

“A recent decision,” she said. “I decided to watch for new guys, and waylay them, and warn them.”

“About what?”

“About what Lane is really like. About what he did.”

“What did he do?”

“I’ll make coffee,” Patti said.

There was no stopping her. She ducked into a small pass-through kitchen and started fiddling with a machine. Pretty soon Reacher could smell coffee. He wasn’t thirsty. He had just drunk a whole bottle of water. But he liked coffee. He figured he could stay for a cup.

Patti called out, “No cream, no sugar, right?”

“How did you know that?”

“I trust my instincts,” she said.

And I trust mine , Reacher thought, although he wasn’t entirely sure what they were telling him right then.

“I need you to get to the point,” he said.

“OK,” Patti Joseph said. “I will.” And then she said: “Anne wasn’t kidnapped five years ago. That was just a cover story. Lane murdered her.”

PATTI JOSEPH BROUGHTJack Reacher black coffee in a huge white Wedgwood mug. Twenty ounce. Venti. She set it on an oversized coaster and turned her back on him and sat on the dining chair at the window. Picked up the pen in her right hand and the binoculars in her left. They looked heavy. She held them the way a shot putter holds the big iron ball, balanced on her open palm, close to her neck.

“Edward Lane is a cold man,” she said. “He demands loyalty and respect and obedience. He needs those things, like a junkie needs a fix. That’s what this whole mercenary venture is about, really. He couldn’t bear losing his command position, when he left the military. So he decided to re-create it all over again. He needs to give orders and have them obeyed. Like you or I need to breathe. He’s borderline mentally ill, I think. Psychotic.”

“And?” Reacher said.

“He ignores his stepdaughter. Have you noticed that?”

Reacher said nothing. He didn’t mention Jade had been taken until later , he thought. He had her cropped out of the picture in the living room .

“My sister Anne wasn’t very obedient,” Patti said. “Nothing outrageous. Nothing unreasonable. But Edward Lane ran the marriage like a military operation. Anne couldn’t handle it. And the more she chafed, the more Lane demanded discipline. It became his fetish.”

“What did she see in him in the first place?”

“He can be charismatic. He’s strong and silent. And intelligent, in a narrow way.”

“What was she before?”

“A model.”

Reacher said nothing.

“Yes,” Patti said. “Just like the next one.”

“What happened?”

“Between them they drove the marriage on the rocks. It was inevitable, I guess. One day she told me she wanted a divorce. I was all in favor of that, of course. It was the best thing for her. But she tried to do the whole drag-out knock-down thing. Alimony, division of assets, the whole nine yards. Which was the worst possible thing she could have done. I knew it was a mistake. I told her just to get the hell out while she still could. But she had brought money to the relationship. Lane had used it for part of his initial stake. Anne wanted her share back. But Lane couldn’t even handle the insubordination of his wife wanting out of the marriage. To be made to give her money as well was out of the question for him. And it would have been a public humiliation, because he would have had to go out and find another investor. So he went completely postal. He faked a kidnapping and had her killed.”

Silence for a moment.

“The police were involved,” Reacher said. “The FBI, too. There must have been a certain level of scrutiny.”

Patti turned around to face the room. Smiled, sadly.

“Here we go,” she said. “We’ve reached the point where the little sister is sounding a little crazy and obsessed. But obviously Lane planned it well. He made it seem very real.”

“How?”

“His men. He employs a bunch of killers. They’re all used to obeying orders. And they’re all smart. They all know how to do stuff like this. And they aren’t virgins. Every single one of them has been out on covert operations. And probably every single one of them has killed before, up close and personal.”

Reacher nodded. No question about it. Every one of them has. Many times .

“You got any particular suspects in mind?” he asked.

“None of the guys you’ve seen,” Patti said. “Nobody who’s still in the A-team. I don’t think the dynamic would permit that. Not as time went by. I don’t think it would be sustainable, psychologically. But I don’t think he would have used B-teamers. He would have needed people he could have trusted completely.”

“So who?”

“A-team guys who aren’t around anymore.”

“Who would be in that category?”

“There were two,” Patti said. “A guy called Hobart and a guy called Knight.”

“Why aren’t they around anymore? Why would two trusted A-teamers just up and leave?”

“Shortly after Anne died there was an operation overseas somewhere. Apparently it went bad. Two men didn’t come back. Those two.”

“That would be a coincidence,” Reacher said. “Wouldn’t it? The two guilty men were the two who didn’t come back?”

“I think Lane made sure they didn’t come back. He needed to tidy things up.”

Reacher said nothing.

“I know,” Patti said. “The little sister is crazy, right?”

Reacher gazed at her. She didn’t look crazy. A little spacey, maybe. In a sixties way, like her sister. She had a curtain of long blonde hair, straight, parted in the middle, just the same as Anne in the photograph. Big blue eyes, a button nose, a dusting of freckles, pale skin. She was wearing a white peasant blouse and faded blue jeans. She was barefoot and braless. You could have taken her picture and put it straight on the cover of a compilation CD. The Summer of Love . The Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company. Reacher liked music like that. He had been seven during the Summer of Love, and he wished he had been seventeen.