Lee Child - Killing Floor

I laughed, happily.

“Right,” I said. “Their pants are down around their ankles. Their asses are hanging out in the breeze. That’s what they were so worried about. That’s why they’re panicking.”

Finlay shook his head. Grinned at the windshield.

“How the hell did you figure this out?” he asked.

I didn’t answer right away. We drove on. The highway was hoisting us through the gathering sprawl of Atlanta’s southern edge. Blocks were filling up. Construction and commerce were busy confirming the Sunbelt’s growing strength. Cranes stood ready to shore up the city’s southern wall against the rural emptiness outside.

“We’re going to take this one step at a time,” I said.

“First of all, I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to show you an air conditioner box stuffed with genuine one-dollar bills.”

“You are?” he said. “Where?”

I glanced across at him.

“In the Stollers’ garage,” I said.

“Christ’s sake, Reacher,” he said. “It got burned down. And there was nothing in it, right? Even if there was, now it’s got the Atlanta PD and fire chiefs swarming all over it.”

“I’ve got no information says it got burned down,” I said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he said. “I told you, it was on the telex.”

“Where did you go to school?” I asked him.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” he said.

“Precision,” I said. “It’s a habit of mind. It can get reinforced by good schooling. You saw Joe’s computer printout, right?”

Finlay nodded.

“You recall the second-to-last item?” I asked him.

“Stollers’ Garage,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “But think about the punctuation. If the apostrophe was before the final letter, it would mean the garage belonging to one person called Stoller. The singular possessive, they call it in school, right?”

“But?” he said.

“It wasn’t written like that,” I said. “The apostrophe came after the final letter. It meant the garage belonging to the Stollers. The plural possessive. The garage belonging to two people called Stoller. And there weren’t two people called Stoller living at the house out by the golf course. Judy and Sherman weren’t married. The only place we’re going to find two people called Stoller is the little old house where Sherman’s parents live. And they’ve got a garage.”

Finlay drove on in silence. Trawled back to his grade-school grammar.

“You think he stashed a box with his folks?” he said.

“It’s logical,” I said. “The boxes we saw in his own place were empty. But Sherman didn’t know he was going to die last Thursday. So it’s reasonable to assume he had more savings stashed away somewhere else. He thought he was going to live for years without working.”

We were just about into Atlanta. The big interchange was coming up.

“Loop around past the airport,” I told him.

We skirted the city on a raised ribbon of concrete. We passed near the airport. I found my way back to the poor part of town. It was nearly seven thirty in the morning. The place looked pretty good in the soft morning light. The low sun gave it a spurious glow. I found the right street, and the right house, crouching inoffensively behind its hurricane fencing.

We got out of the car and I led Finlay through the gate in the wire fence. Along the straight path to the door. I nodded to him. He pulled his badge and pounded on the door. We heard the hallway floor creak. We heard bolts and chains snapping and clinking. Then the door opened. Sherman Stoller’s mother stood there. She looked awake. Didn’t look like we’d got her out of bed. She didn’t speak. Just stared out at us.

“Morning, Mrs. Stoller,” I said. “Remember me?”

“You’re a police officer,” she said.

Finlay held his badge out toward her. She nodded.

“Better come in,” she said.

We followed her down the hall into the cramped kitchen.

“What can I do for you?” the old lady asked.

“We’d like to see the inside of your garage, ma’am,” Finlay said. “We have reason to believe your son may have placed some stolen property there.”

The woman stood silently in her kitchen for a moment. Then she turned and took a key off a nail on the wall. Handed it to us without a word. Walked off down the narrow hallway and disappeared into another room. Finlay shrugged at me and we went back out the front door and walked around to the garage.

It was a small tumbledown structure, barely big enough for a single car. Finlay used the key on the lock and swung the door open. The garage was empty except for two tall cartons. They were stacked side by side against the end wall. Identical to the empty boxes I’d seen at Sherman Stoller’s new house. Island Air-conditioning, Inc. But these were still sealed with tape. They had long handwritten serial numbers. I took a good look at them. According to those numbers, there was a hundred thousand dollars in each box.

Finlay and I stood there looking at the boxes. Just staring at them. Then I walked over and rocked one out from the wall. Took out Morrison’s knife and popped the blade. Pushed the point under the sealing tape and slit the top open. Pulled up the flaps on the top and pushed the box over.

It landed with a dusty thump on the concrete floor. An avalanche of paper money poured out. Cash fluttered over the floor. A mass of paper money. Thousands and thousands of dollar bills. A river of singles, some new, some crumpled, some in thick rolls, some in wide bricks, some loose and fluttering. The carton spilled its contents and the flood tide of cash reached Finlay’s polished shoes. He crouched down and plunged his hands into the lake of money. He grabbed two random fistfuls of cash and held them up. The tiny garage was dim. Just a small dirty windowpane letting in the pale morning light. Finlay stayed down on the floor with his big hands full of dollar bills. We looked at the money and we looked at each other.

“How much was in there?” Finlay asked.

I kicked the box over to find the handwritten number. More cash spilled out and fluttered over the floor.

“Nearly a hundred thousand,” I told him.

“What about the other one?” he said.

I looked over at the other box. Read the long hand written number.

“A hundred grand plus change,” I said. “Must be packed tighter.”

He shook his head. Dropped the dollar bills and started swishing his hands through the pile. Then he got up and started kicking it around. Like a kid does with fall leaves. I joined him. We were laughing and kicking great sprays of cash all over the place. The air was thick with it. We were whooping and slapping each other on the back. We were smacking high tens and dancing around in a hundred thousand dollars on a garage floor.

FINLAY REVERSED THE BENTLEY UP TO THE GARAGE DOOR. I kicked the cash into piles and started stuffing it back into the air conditioner box. It wouldn’t all go in. Problem was the tight rolls and bricks had sprung apart. It was just a mess of loose dollar bills. I stood the box upright and crushed the money down as far as I could, but it was hopeless. I must have left about thirty grand on the garage floor.

“We’ll take the sealed box,” Finlay said. “Come back for the rest later.”

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” I said. “We should leave it for the old folks. Like a pension fund. An inheritance from their boy.”

He thought about it. Shrugged, like it didn’t matter. The cash was just lying around like litter. There was so much of it, it didn’t seem like anything at all.

“OK,” he said.

We dragged the sealed box out into the morning light. Heaved it into the Bentley’s trunk. It wasn’t easy. The box was very heavy. A hundred thousand dollars weighs about two hundred pounds. We rested up for a moment, panting. Then we shut the garage door. Left the other hundred grand in there.