Lee Child - MatchUp

All he wanted was Antonio Childers.

“Where is he?”

“He was in Atlanta,” she said. “Blew out of town three days ago and our team down there figured he was northbound. They were partially right. He went north, but not far. Ended up in a small town up the mountains a couple hours northwest of the city. Best guess is he was waiting on a courier, or he was testing his back trail to see whether he was being followed. We’re not sure.”

“But he’s still there?”

“Possibly.”

That didn’t sound encouraging.

“His car is there. This morning, local police found that for us. With a few bricks of cocaine, some cash, a half-dozen semiautomatic handguns, and . . .” She paused and opened the folder for the first time. “One Nora Simpson, now deceased, of Helen, Georgia.”

She passed them a photo. It had come through on a fax and the image quality was grainy but you didn’t need any better clarity to see the gunshot wound to the stomach.

“This happened this morning, or the car was found this morning?” Joe asked. “Or both?”

The crew-cut guy made the finger-gun gesture.

Joe figured that meant it was both.

“So you think our boy Antonio did the shooting, but now he’s missing,” Perry said.

Luisa nodded.

“Then the locals are also looking for him,” Perry said. “Yet you want us to go to Georgia. With a warrant for a lesser charge. Explain that?”

Joe explained it for her. “They don’t want him jailed in Georgia. Not yet, at least.”

Crew Cut gave him the finger-gun again.

More points for the home team.

“We’ve got questions about the local police,” Luisa said. “Not only that, but we have another officer in custody for the situation. A Detective Jeffrey Tolliver of Birmingham, Alabama. Originally from a little town called Sylacauga. Played football for Auburn. His lieutenant hates him, but he has a good reputation for the most part. A sheriff named Clayton Hollister speaks highly of him, too. Doesn’t seem likely he was running cocaine with Antonio Childers.”

“So what was he doing in Georgia with the dead woman?”

“Before she was a dead woman, she was a live woman with a hotel room,” Luisa said. “It seems that even Mr. Tolliver’s staunchest defenders will admit that he has a proclivity for finding his way into hotel rooms with women who may be, um, recent acquaintances.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Perry said, and Joe gave him a warning look.

“Listen,” Luisa said, “what we need is to get Antonio Childers in custody in a hurry, but also in the right cell. We’re giving the lead you’ve been looking for. Hell, we’re even giving you plane tickets for the cause.”

“Why so important that it’s Ohio?” Joe asked.

She chose her words carefully. “Because we believe he has friends in Georgia who are a lot more important to us than he is, and we don’t want them to get early chances with him.”

“Police?” Joe asked. “You think your supplier involves police?”

If there was anything he loathed more than the Antonio Childerses of the world, it was a cop who’d help them.

“We just want him in Ohio,” Luisa said without elaborating, but it was all she needed to say.

“So do we,” Joe said. “Let’s get to Georgia. How far is the drive from Atlanta to this town, Helen?”

“About two hours, usually. But there’s snow coming in. Might slow things down.”

“Hell,” Joe said, “this is Cleveland. There’s always snow coming in. We’ll be fine.”

He’d remember that statement often in the hours to come.

They flew direct to Atlanta and were in a rental car and northbound on I-85 by 2 p.m. There had been no four-wheel drives available at the rental counter; everyone was scared of the storm that hadn’t arrived yet. There was no snow, and the temperature was near 50. Which wouldn’t have been a poor Memorial Day in Cleveland.

But the air promised that was changing.

Changing to what nobody seemed to know, although everybody agreed it was going to be a mess.

The only thing they could find on the radio was dire news about the storm that was blowing up from Cuba and through Florida and what havoc it might wreak on Georgia overnight. That, and some goddamn song called “I Will Always Love You” that was the only thing more annoying than listening to meteorologists talk about barometric pressure shifts. They made it maybe twenty miles before Joe shut the radio off for good.

Once they were outside the perimeter, traffic opened up and they made good time heading north, the city and suburbs falling away behind them and the rural mountains opening up ahead. A light, misting rain was falling, trying to turn to ice. Farms, trailers, and churches dominated the roadside. They angled northwest and climbed higher in the mountains, and a pickup truck with a lifted suspension and oversized terrain tires growled past them, its tailgate a mud-splattered collage of bumper stickers pledging allegiance to God, guns, and the Confederacy. Perry began to whistle the dueling banjos bit from Deliverance, but Joe thought about that forecast and wouldn’t have minded having the truck. Or anything that sat higher than the rented Chevy Malibu.

The road curled up and over a ridge and then they descended into Helen and Joe pressed on the brake.

The town was lined with Bavarian-style, multicolored chalets. Every home. Every business. He and Perry stared first at the town, then at each other.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” Perry said. “Where’d we pass through the wormhole?”

Joe drove slowly down the town’s main street, looking for the sheriff’s department. They passed a Wendy’s, which featured the same exterior as the rest of the place.

Bavarian building code strictly enforced, apparently.

“Okay,” Perry said, “so what’s the plan? Do I distract the Nazis while you escape with the Von Trapps, or do you want to do it the other way around?”

“Maybe it’ll be easy,” Joe said. “Maybe every hour all these places pop open like cuckoo clocks and we just sit on the car and wait for Antonio to roll out onto a porch, fire his gun a few times, and get sucked back in until the next hour.”

Perry pointed to the right. “There’s a sign for the PD. Turn on, um . . . Alpenrosen Strasse. No shit, Joe, that’s what it says.”

“We gotta find some sauerkraut before we leave. God, I love good sauerkraut. If they don’t have that, this place is nothing but a fraud.”

“Maybe at the Wendy’s?” Perry suggested, and Joe smiled.

The kid was all right.

Of course, Joe hadn’t seen him under pressure yet. And if Antonio Childers was still anywhere near this place, they might run into pressure sooner than later.

They found the police located in a shared municipal office. They got out and walked through the rain to the building, and Joe noticed the temperature had dropped since their arrival in Atlanta. They were up higher now, and maybe that explained it, but, still, the air felt strange, and an uneasy wind blew the rain at them in gusts.

Inside, a black woman in a police uniform sat alone behind her desk. If there was any other presence in the police department, they were well hidden. Joe introduced himself, showed his badge, and asked to see the chief.

“He’s up in Cleveland,” she said, and he blinked at her, thinking for a moment that seemed like a definitively federal operation, sending Cleveland police to Georgia and Georgia police to Cleveland, before she added, “It’s not far, just fifteen minutes. That’s where the county sheriff is. And the jail.”

“Cleveland, Georgia,” Joe said. “Got it. Right. Did they handle the Nora Simpson shooting this morning?”

She seemed to puff up with righteous indignation. “No, they did not. That was our police department.”