Lee Child - The Hard Way

“She was really going at it,” Pauling said. “Wasn’t she? Metaphorically she was lighting a candle for her brother every single day for five years.”

“Like Patti Joseph,” Reacher said. “This is a tale of two sisters.”

“The Pentagon knew Hobart was alive after twelve months. And they knew where he was. But they kept quiet for four years. They let this poor woman suffer.”

“What was she going to do anyway? Lock and load and go to Africa and rescue him single-handed? Bring him back to stand trial for Anne Lane’s homicide?”

“There was never any evidence against him.”

“Whatever, keeping her in the dark was probably the best policy.”

“Spoken like a true military man.”

“Like the FBI is a fount of free information?”

“She could have gone over there and petitioned the new government in Burkina Faso personally.”

“That only works in the movies.”

“You’re very cynical, you know that?”

“I don’t have a cynical bone in my body. I’m realistic, is all. Shit happens.”

Pauling went quiet.

“What?” Reacher said.

“You said lock and load. You said Dee Marie could lock and load and go to Africa.”

“No, I said she couldn’t.”

“But we agree that Hobart picked up a new partner, right?” she said. “As soon as he got back? One that he trusts, and real fast?”

“Clearly,” Reacher said.

“Could it be the sister?”

Reacher said nothing.

“The trust would be there,” Pauling said. “Wouldn’t it? Automatically? And she was there, which would explain the speed. And the commitment would have been there, on her part. Commitment, and a lot of anger. So is it possible that the voice you heard on the car phone was a woman?”

Reacher was quiet for a beat.

“It’s possible,” he said. “I guess. I mean, it never struck me that way. Never. But that could just be a preconception on my part. An unconscious bias. Because those machines are tough. They could make Minnie Mouse sound like Darth Vader.”

“You said there was a lightness to the voice. Like a small man.”

Reacher nodded. “Yes, I did.”

“Therefore like a woman. With the pitch altered an octave, it’s plausible.”

“It could be,” Reacher said. “Certainly whoever it was knew the West Village streets pretty well.”

“Like a ten-year resident would. Plus military jargon, from having had a husband and a brother in the Marine Corps.”

“Maybe,” Reacher said. “Gregory told me a woman showed up in the Hamptons. A fat woman.”

“Fat?”

“Gregory said heavyset.”

“Surveillance?”

“No, she and Kate talked. They went walking on the beach.”

“Maybe it was Dee Marie. Maybe she’s fat. Maybe she was asking for money. Maybe Kate blew her off and that was the last straw.”

“This is about more than money.”

“But that doesn’t mean this isn’t at least partly about money,” Pauling said. “And judging by where she’s living Dee Marie needs money. Her share would be more than five million dollars. She might think of it like compensation. For five years of stonewalling. A million dollars a year.”

“Maybe,” Reacher said again.

“It’s a hypothesis,” Pauling said. “We shouldn’t rule it out.”

“No,” Reacher said. “We shouldn’t.”

Pauling pulled a city directory off her shelf and checked the Hudson Street address.

“They’re south of Houston,” she said. “Between Vandam and Charlton. Not between Clarkson and Leroy. We were wrong.”

“Maybe they like a bar a few blocks north,” Reacher said. “He couldn’t have called himself Charlton Vandam anyway. That’s way too phony.”

“Whatever, they’re only fifteen minutes from here.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. This is another brick in the wall, that’s all. One or both of them, whichever, they must be long gone already. They’d be crazy to stick around.”

“You think?”

“They’ve got blood on their hands and money in their pockets, Pauling. They’ll be in the Caymans by now. Or Bermuda, or Venezuela, or wherever the hell people go these days.”

“So what do we do?”

“We head over to Hudson Street, and we hope like crazy that the trail is still a little bit warm.”

BETWEEN THEM INtheir previous lives and afterward Reacher and Pauling had approached probably a thousand buildings that may or may not have contained hostile suspects. They knew exactly how to do it. There was efficient back-and-forth tactical discussion. They were coming from a position of weakness, in that neither of them was armed and Hobart had met Pauling twice before. She had interviewed Lane’s whole crew at length after Anne Lane’s disappearance. Chances were Hobart would remember her even after the traumatic five-year interval. Balancing those disadvantages was Reacher’s strong conviction that the Hudson Street apartment would be empty. He expected to find nothing there except hastily tossed closets and one last can of rotting trash.

There was no doorman. It wasn’t that kind of a building. It was a boxy five-story tenement faced with dull red brick and a black iron fire escape. It was the last hold-out on a block full of design offices and bank branches. It had a chipped black door with an aluminum squawk box chiseled sideways into the frame. Ten black buttons. Ten nametags. Graziano was written neatly against 4L .

“Walk-up,” Pauling said. “Central staircase. Long thin front-to-back apartments, two to a floor, one on the left, one on the right. Four-L will be on the fourth floor, on the left.”

Reacher tried the door. It was locked and solid.

“What’s at the back?” he asked.

“Probably an air shaft between this and the back of the building on Greenwich.”

“We could rappel off the roof and come in through her kitchen window.”

“I trained for that at Quantico,” Pauling said. “But I never did it for real.”

“Neither did I,” Reacher said. “Not a kitchen. I did a bathroom window once.”

“Was that fun?”

“Not really.”

“So what shall we do?”

Normally Reacher would have hit a random button and claimed to be a UPS or FedEx guy. But he wasn’t sure whether that would work with this particular building. Courier deliveries probably weren’t regular occurrences there. And he figured it was almost four o’clock in the afternoon. Not a plausible time for pizza or Chinese food. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner. So he just hit every button except 4L’s and said in a loud slurred voice, “Can’t find my key.” And at least two households must have had an errant member missing because the door buzzed twice and Pauling pushed it open.

Inside was a dim center hallway with a narrow staircase on the right. The staircase ran up one floor and then doubled back and started over again at the front of the building. It was covered in cracked linoleum. It was illuminated with low wattage bulbs. It looked like a death trap.

“Now what?” Pauling asked.

“Now we wait,” Reacher said. “At least two people are going to be sticking their heads out looking for whoever lost their key.”

So they waited. One minute. Two. Way above them in the gloom a door opened. Then closed again. Then another door opened. Closer. Second floor, maybe. Thirty seconds later it slammed shut.

“OK,” Reacher said. “Now we’re good to go.”

He put his weight on the bottom tread of the staircase and it creaked loudly. The second tread was the same. And the third. As he stepped onto the fourth Pauling started up behind him. By the time he was halfway up the whole structure was creaking and cracking like small arms fire.