Lee Child - Killing Floor

“Is that the guy you’ve got statues of?” I said.

Finlay nodded.

“Caspar Teale,” he said. “He was the first. They’ve had Teales here ever since. This mayor must be the great-grandson or something.”

I was in a minefield. I needed to find a clear lane through.

“What’s the story with this guy Teale?” I asked him.

Finlay shrugged. Tried to find a way to explain it.

“He’s just a southern asshole,” he said. “Old Georgia family, probably a long line of southern assholes. They’ve been the mayors around here since the beginning. I dare say this one’s no worse than the others.”

“Was he upset?” I said. “When you called him about Morrison?”

“Worried, I think,” Finlay said. “He hates mess.”

“Why won’t he make you chief?” I said. “You’re the senior guy, right?”

“He just won’t,” Finlay said. “Why not is my business.”

I watched him for a moment longer. Life or death.

“Somewhere we can go to talk?” I said.

He looked over the desk at me.

“You thought it was Hubble got killed, right?” he said. “Why?”

“Hubble did get killed,” I said. “Fact that Morrison got killed as well doesn’t change it.”

WE WALKED DOWN TO THE CONVENIENCE STORE. SAT SIDE by side at the empty counter, near the window. I sat at the same place the pale Mrs. Kliner had used when I was in there the day before. That seemed like a long time ago. The world had changed since then. We got tall mugs of coffee and a big plate of donuts. Didn’t look at each other directly. We looked at each other in the mirror behind the counter.

“Why won’t you get the promotion?” I asked him.

His reflection shrugged in the mirror. He was looking puzzled. He couldn’t see the connection. But he’d see it soon enough.

“I should get it,” he said. “I’m better qualified than all the others put together. I’ve done twenty years in a big city. A real police department. What the hell have they done? Look at Baker, for instance. He figures himself for a smart boy. But what has he done? Fifteen years in the sticks? In this backwater? What the hell does he know?”

“So why won’t you get it?” I said.

“It’s a personal matter,” he said.

“You think I’m going to sell it to the newspaper?” I asked him.

“It’s a long story,” he said.

“So tell it to me,” I said. “I need to know.”

He looked at me in the mirror. Took a deep breath.

“I finished in Boston in March,” he said. “Done my twenty years. Unblemished record. Eight commendations. I was one hell of a detective, Reacher. I had retirement on full pension to look forward to. But my wife was going crazy. Since last fall, she was getting agitated. It was so ironic. We were married all through those twenty years. I was working my ass off. Boston PD was a madhouse. We were working seven days a week. All day and all night. All around me guys were seeing their marriages fall apart. They were all getting divorced. One after the other.”

He stopped for a long pull on his coffee. Took a bite of donut.

“But not me,” he said. “My wife could take it. Never complained, never once. She was a miracle. Never gave me a hard time.”

He lapsed back into silence. I thought about twenty years in Boston. Working around the clock in that busy old city. Grimy nineteenth-century precincts. Overloaded facilities. Constant pressure. An endless parade of freaks, villains, politicians, problems. Finlay had done well to survive.

“It started last fall,” he said again. “We were within six months of the end. It was all going to be over. We were thinking of a cabin somewhere, maybe. Vacations. Plenty of time together. But she started panicking. She didn’t want plenty of time together. She didn’t want me to retire. She didn’t want me at home. She said she woke up to the fact that she didn’t like me. Didn’t love me. Didn’t want me around. She’d loved the twenty years. Didn’t want it to change. I couldn’t believe it. It had been my dream. Twenty years and then retire at forty-five. Then maybe another twenty years enjoying ourselves together before we got too old, you know? It was my dream and I’d worked toward it for twenty years. But she didn’t want it. She ended up saying the thought of twenty more years with me in a cabin in the woods was making her flesh crawl. It got really bitter. We fell apart. I was a total basket case.”

He trailed off again. We got more coffee. It was a sad story. Stories about wrecked dreams always are.

“So obviously, we got divorced,” he said. “Nothing else to do. She demanded it. It was terrible. I was totally out of it. Then in my last month in the department I started reading the union vacancy lists again. Saw this job down here. I called an old buddy in Atlanta FBI and asked him about it. He warned me off. He said forget it. He said it was a Mickey Mouse department in a town that wasn’t even on the map. The job was called the chief of detectives, but there was only one detective. The previous guy was a weirdo who hung himself. The department was run by a fat moron. The town was run by some old Georgia type who couldn’t remember slavery had been abolished. My friend up in Atlanta said forget it. But I was so screwed up I wanted it. I thought I could bury myself down here as a punishment, you know? A kind of penance. Also, I needed the money. They were offering top dollar and I was looking at alimony and lawyer bills, you know? So I applied for it and came down. It was Mayor Teale and Morrison who saw me. I was a basket case, Reacher. I was a wreck. I couldn’t string two words together. It had to be the worst job application in the history of the world. I must have come across as an idiot. But they gave me the job. I guess they needed a black guy to look good. I’m the first black cop in Margrave’s history.”

I turned on the stool and looked straight at him.

“So you figure you’re just a token?” I said. “That’s why Teale won’t make you chief?”

“It’s obvious, I guess,” he said. “He’s got me marked down as a token and an idiot. Not to be promoted further. Makes sense in a way. Can’t believe they gave me the job in the first place, token or not.”

I waved to the counter guy for the check. I was happy with Finlay’s story. He wasn’t going to be chief. So I trusted him. And I trusted Roscoe. It was going to be the three of us, against whoever. I shook my head at him in the mirror.

“You’re wrong,” I said. “That’s not the real reason. You’re not going to be chief because you’re not a criminal.”

I PAID THE CHECK WITH A TEN AND GOT ALL QUARTERS FOR change. The guy still had no dollar bills. Then I told Finlay I needed to see the Morrison place. Told him I needed all the details. He just shrugged and led me outside. We turned and walked south. Passed by the village green and put the town behind us.

“I was the first one there,” he said. “About ten this morning. I hadn’t seen Morrison since Friday and I needed to update the guy, but I couldn’t get him on the phone. It was middle of the morning on a Monday and we hadn’t done anything worth a damn about a double homicide from last Thursday night. We needed to get our asses in gear. So I went up to his house to start looking for him.”

He went quiet and walked on. Revisiting in his mind the scene he’d found.

“Front door was standing open,” he said. “Maybe a half inch. It had a bad feel. I went in, found them upstairs in the master bedroom. It was like a butcher’s shop. Blood everywhere. He was nailed to the wall, sort of hanging off. Both of them sliced up, him and his wife. It was terrible. About twenty-four hours of decomposition. Warm weather. Very unpleasant. So I called in the whole crew and we went over every inch and pieced it all together. Literally, I’m afraid.”