Lee Child - MatchUp

“Left this morning before the storm came in. They had a long way to go.”

“Where?”

“Michigan?”

At least he hadn’t said Cleveland.

Jeffrey let his eyes travel around the empty lobby. Crappy leather couch. Overstuffed chairs. Card table by the door. A sign read COFFEE BAR but the urn was upside down and there were no cups, the same as it had been this morning.

He asked the kid, “Did Chief DuPree interview you?”

“Yeah. I told him I ain’t seen nothing. I work the day shift. I was just pulling up when Corinna got the news about Nora.”

“You were pulling up in your truck?”

“I wish. Drove in my mama’s Camry this morning. My motorcycle’s in the shop, which is fine by me ’cause the whole witch is cold today. You know what I mean?”

“Do you know anybody who drives a blue Ford pickup? Late model?”

He kept scratching his chest, like his brain was in there and could feel the stimulation. “Coupl’a three boys I went to school with. My grandpappy. Pastor Davis. Mrs. Fields who owns the—”

“Where does Nora live?”

“With Corinna up the mountain. And her brother, Double. It’s a fur piece, right up near the falls.”

“Ruby Falls?”

“Yep, just take Millar Road before you get to the falls. They’re the second trailer on the right, got an American flag outside—but, lookit, mister.” The kid lowered his voice as if inviting him into a confidence. “I wouldn’t mess with Double. He’s the kinda guy who’s always looking for trouble. Worse than his daddy, even, and his daddy’s doing hard time down in Valdosta for a triple murder.” He gave Jeffrey a knowing look. “That’s where ‘Double’ comes from, on account of compared to his daddy, he’s double trouble.”

He knew the sort, and he wasn’t scared. “Does Double drive an old blue Ford truck?”

“Black one. Brand-new.”

That sounded a little too nice for a kid named Double. “He deal drugs?”

The kid balked.

“I’m from Alabama, buddy. You can snort your fucking way to the state line and I won’t give a shit.”

The kid started nodding. “Yeah, he’s a dealer.”

“Big fish or a little fish?”

“Medium fish, but he’s always lookin’ to get bigger. Since he was in kindergarten even.” The kid cleared his throat. “I was in his class. He was hateful even then. Like, pull the wings off a butterfly hateful.”

“Does he run girls?”

“Just his sisters. And a wall-eyed cousin. And that neighbor girl with the funny name. And sometimes his mama, but that takes a certain type of guy wants an older gal. You know what I mean?”

Jeffrey let that sink in. “There was a black guy with—”

“A Cleveland baseball cap?” the kid asked. “Yeah, the chief asked me about him, but I ain’t seen him.”

“Did Chief DuPree go through your guest register?”

“Sure did, but he didn’t find nobody matching the description. Even knocked on the doors to double-check.”

He had no doubt Corinna went off-book with cash-paying guests.

The kid leaned over, suddenly chatty. “See, I don’t think there was a black guy in a hat. I think ol’ DuPree was testing me, ’cause there’s three black people in town, and Sergeant Ava, that’s the chief’s wife, is one of them, and her father and her mother are the other two, and if there was a fourth black person, she would know that fella, too, right?” He held up his hands. “I’m not being racist, all right? That’s how it is.”

“I get it,” he said.

And he did.

He worked in the Titusville area of Birmingham, a poor African American area. Oftentimes, he was the only white guy on the streets. People knew him by color, not name.

The kid said, “I told the chief to check next door at the Hof, but Mr. Tucker, he don’t rent to black people. Not that we get that many up here. Everybody knows they don’t like the cold.”

So much for not being racist.

“That’s all I got,” the kid said. “I promise.”

He was still lying, but Jeffrey wasn’t sure about what, or if it even mattered. Everybody lied to the police, even the ones who were trying to help.

Especially the ones who were trying to help.

He left the hotel.

The wind whipped at his clothes. In the twenty minutes he’d been inside, the ground had become thick with snow. He stuck his hands in his pockets, fighting the sensation of his skin being burned off by the wind. For once the weathermen had been right. This storm was going to knock the state on its ass. The sky looked worse than ominous, something stuck between a tornado and Armageddon.

Despite the arctic blast, he stood roughly where he had stood in the parking lot earlier that morning. He was pretty sure that the guy in the Cleveland Indian hat had come out of the Linderhof with his cup of coffee. He’d dismissed the event as random at the time, but with a dead body, nothing was random.

So maybe this is what happened.

Last night, Cleveland Hat stays at the Schussel Mountain Lodge. He parks his car close to the building, probably so he can see it from his room, which is at the front of the hotel because that’s what he asks for. Cleveland’s got the coke and guns with him in the room, but he wants to make sure no one is snooping around his stolen car—a cop, say, or an idiot kid looking for a joyride.

Cleveland stays the night.

Then goes downstairs in the morning to check out of the hotel, finds himself enveloped by cheery blond-haired and blue-eyed Michiganers for Jesus, which is bad, then finds out there’s no coffee, which is worse, so he loads up his car, walks over to the Linderhof, grabs a cup of coffee, and comes out to find his Mustang gone and a half-naked man standing in the parking lot.

Cleveland had played it cool with Jeffrey. The man’s casual tip of his hat said it all. This wasn’t his first rodeo. You didn’t get to be a black man traveling up the northeastern corridor with a carload of coke and guns without having a pair of brass ones. No wonder the DEA was on this guy’s trail. The murder charge would bring even more resources into what was probably shaping up to be an interstate trafficking investigation, possibly a RICO charge. Cleveland could be either the tip of the iceberg or, better yet, the tip of the spear.

Jeffrey picked up the pace as he walked toward the alleyway. His sneakers became soaked with snow. His jeans wicked up the cold as he approached the Mustang that was not his Mustang. The police tape was floating in the wind, torn in two and flapping off the side mirrors like flags outside a used car dealership.

He stopped by the driver’s-side door, took his keys out of his pocket, trying to think how Nora would’ve worked it. He imagined her running out of the Schussel, probably right when Cleveland was going into the Linderhof to score his coffee. She spots the Mustang parked out front, runs toward it, jams the car key into the door lock—

That wasn’t right.

The door would’ve been unlocked, because Cleveland had used a slim jim to open the door. He could see where the gasket had been sliced by the flat, hooked piece of metal that had been used to pull up the locking mechanism.

So she opened the car door.

He did the same.

Then she’d climbed in.

So did he, giving himself a second to enjoy the sensation of not being battered by hurricane-like winds. The car was bright white inside from the snow on all the windows. He found the ignition switch. Dash mounted, the same as his. Some engineer at Ford had had the bright idea to add a little sidebar hole in the face of the ignition switch. You slide the key in the ignition and turned it to Accessory, then bent open a paper clip and shoved it into the hole. Voilà. The cylinder inside the ignition switch popped out.