Lee Child - MatchUp

She hadn’t always had the best of luck with the feds, and wasn’t that crazy about them. But in this case the agent named David Burch said, “I’ll get on to the Vegas office and have them pick up the tape and get the manager to ID these guys. If we’ve got good head shots, we’ll run it through a facial ID program and see what pops up. Most of the time, nothing does, but if this is as high end and well organized as you’re making it sound, then maybe something will. These people sound like they’ve been doing it for a while.”

“How long before I hear?”

“Tomorrow morning, probably. We’ll push it hard. I hate these guys. Hate ’em,” Burch said.

“Amen.” Her anger hardened at the thought of the kids trapped in whatever the hell scam it was. “So, David. Can I call you David?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you can call me Regan or Pescoli. The ma’am thing makes me feel old. The thing is, I need to talk to you off the record.”

“We’re off.”

No hesitation.

Deciding to trust him, she launched into her story and told him about Virgil and Johnson, and about Phillip Weeks. “I have a feeling that the Weeks kid may be running from whatever was going down. The sex, or porn, movies, pictures, whatever.”

“Nothing good.”

“You got that right. I’m going to try to corner him tonight and see what he knows. He’s also running from his old man, who could be in on it. I think the dad uses his son as a punching bag.”

“Needs to be put in jail.”

Agreed. “While I’m handling the kid, Flowers and Johnson are going up to snoop around the Drake place where they saw the RV. Anything in particular they should look for?”

“If they were making movies or taking photos, we could use pictures of the inside of the studio, or whatever they’re using as a studio. We got a million miles of digitized film. What we’d be looking for is identifiable marks or structures inside the studio, like an identifiable window with a particular kind of latch. Anything like that. We can run a new image against the digitized film and it’ll kick out any exact matches. If we get a match, we’ll be all over them.”

“I’ll tell Flowers. I don’t know exactly how reliable these two are.”

“I started running Flowers as soon as you mentioned his name,” Burch said. “The DEA has been trying to recruit him for years. He’s been involved in some heavy stuff in Minnesota. There’s a note here that says he doesn’t much care for guns.”

“That’s the guy,” she said.

“Looks to me like you can lean on him,” Burch said.

“Good to know,” Regan said.

So Mr. Hang Ten was the real deal.

“Something else. He’s a part-time writer, mostly for outdoors magazines, but he’s had stories in both the New York Times magazine and Vanity Fair . Play your cards right—”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” she said dryly.

She rotated the kinks from her neck and decided she had to head to Butte, which was about a hundred and fifty miles from Grizzly Falls. That meant over two hours by car. She didn’t look forward to the drive, but had to go for it. The case had taken a serious enough turn that even the feds were scrambling. She stopped by Alvarez’s office. Before her maternity leave she and Alvarez had been partners, but they hadn’t been reassigned together.

Not yet, anyway.

Alvarez, always thin and lithe, was doing some yoga pose over her desk, her jet black hair rolled into a tight bun and gleaming under the ever-humming fluorescent lights. The position looked painful and ridiculous, but Alvarez swore by it. Alvarez had always been Regan’s diametric opposite. Into health foods, green tea, worked out at a gym and, of course, yoga.

“I’m stopping at home to see the kids and Santana for a sec, then heading for Butte. On the Daniel Cain case, the fisherman found shot in the river near the WJ Guest Ranch.”

Alvarez nodded.

“It’s gone from homicide to a much wider investigation. Got the feds involved. Zoller can bring you up to speed. Aside from what I’m doing we’ll need to look into who would benefit from Cain’s death. Insurance, wife involved in an affair, him involved in an affair, business problems, known enemies. The working theory was that he was killed by mistake, but I want to cover all my bases.”

Alvarez rolled back her desk chair, rotated her neck, then her shoulders. “I’ll work with Zoller.”

“If you find anything interesting, call my cell.”

After stopping by the house, depositing the bag of breast milk into the refrigerator and spending half an hour feeding and cuddling the baby, she kissed her husband good-bye, assured him that she would be fine and that, though she missed her family terribly, she loved her job and would call them from the road.

“We have to talk about this,” Santana said.

He was taller than she by half a foot, a cowboy type who actually worked on a ranch and was tough as nails. His hair was black, his eyes dark above a hawkish nose, his smile, when he rained it on her, an irreverent slash of white.

“We already did.”

“Then we need to talk about it again. You’re exhausted, the baby needs you, the older kids, too. Hell, I need you.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Make it sooner,” he said and kissed her on the lips, a long slow kiss that turned her inside out, just as it had the first time. She weakened, wanted to melt against him, wanted the feel of him inside her, but that would have to wait.

“I’ll try,” she promised.

Then she took off.

On the way to Butte, she called Flowers and brought him up to speed as the miles rolled by. She told him what FBI agent Burch had said about getting photos of the inside of the studio.

“That’s what we need. Pictures of the place. Something that will nail them, connect the RV or house or some landmark up there to pictures that have already been taken.”

“We’ll go up there after dark,” Flowers said. “Give us a call later on, around midnight.”

IN BUTTE, REGAN FOUND PHILLIP weeks sitting in the corner of a drunk tank, where the Butte cops had put him after picking him up at the bus station. A Butte detective named Charlie Tarley unlocked the door and pushed it open. Weeks, looking terrified, slowly rolled to his feet.

Tarley, African American and looking as if he worked out regularly, said to him, “You got a visitor.”

She stepped forward, into the kid’s range of vision, and held up her badge. “Detective Regan Pescoli. Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department.”

Fear showed in Weeks’s eyes.

He was tall, unnaturally thin, weathered in the way of street people, farmers, and lumberjacks. He bore a fading bruise below one eye.

Tarley said in a calm voice, “C’mon out, Phillip. Detective Pescoli made a long drive to see you. We all need to chat.”

“What’d I do?” Weeks asked.

“You probably took six hundred dollars from a young girl at the WJ Ranch, but your old man paid it back, so that’s not it,” Regan said. “But I think you might know why you want to talk.”

Weeks shoved both hands in his jeans pocket and stared at the floor a second, then looked up through the dark strands of the hair falling over his forehead. Pinning Regan with his suspicious gaze, he said, “He paid it back?”

She nodded.

Weeks shook his head. “Where’d he get the money? He was drinking and didn’t even have enough cash to buy a box of cereal. I know he didn’t have six hundred dollars.”

“He gave it back. All of it. So you’re good on that score,” she said. “C’mon out of there.”

Shuffling reluctantly Weeks followed Regan along a short hallway to an interview room, Tarley trailing behind, talking on a cell phone. The square, windowless room had a table and four chairs. Regan sat directly across from the boy with his downcast eyes, Tarley on her right.