Diane Capri - Jack and Kill

There wasn’t much to look at until they were allowed to make their own right turn and travel slowly past the crash site, craning their necks to watch the show along with the other gawkers.

Kim saw a woman, clothes bloody, shivering under a too-small blanket, perhaps awaiting an ambulance. A towheaded boy, maybe about four years old and wearing a sweater and corduroy jeans stood a short distance away. Oddly for a crash victim, if he was one, the boy seemed to be chatting amiably with a uniformed policewoman. But it was the oversized mound Kim saw on the pavement covered by another dark blanket that caught her attention as Gaspar threaded the needle to move them beyond the scene.

“Pull over on the right,” Kim said.

“Are you sure you want to do that? Even if Reacher’s lying dead under there, we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile, don’t forget.”

She didn’t argue. Fifty feet from the official vehicles, Gaspar pulled off and parked on the wide gravel shoulder. They stepped out of the Crown Vic and into the stinging wind. The air smelled heavy with loam and exhaust. Humidity soaked her skin like a cold cloud bath.

“Aren’t you Latin lovers supposed to be chivalrous? Why don’t you ever have a coat to offer me?” Kim teased, shivering from nerves as well as cold as they trudged through damp earth toward the body.

“November’s always great beach weather in Miami and I don’t own a coat.” Gaspar had stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets after turning up his Banana Republic suit collar. “You’re a liberated female from Detroit. What’s your excuse?”

Kim wondered that herself. She made a mental note to stop at the first affordable department store. Surely somewhere in this town she might be able to find a coat to fit her, even if she had to shop in the girls’ department.

Gaspar didn’t dawdle even though his leg had to be cramped after all the driving. Kim struggled to keep up with his long strides. She didn’t know the full extent of his injuries and he’d made it clear she wasn’t going to find out more from him. Snooping into his background seemed disloyal; she’d wait until he trusted her enough to explain. He limped a little, but as they continued along he seemed to walk it out somehow.

First responders handled the chaotic scene appropriately, Kim noticed. Maybe this was a small town in the middle of nowhere, but officials performed as if they’d been well trained. Emergent needs had been attended to. Now they were processing the crime scene and handling traffic. No one seemed interested in the blanket or the body that lay beneath.

When Otto and Gaspar approached, a plain-clothes official standing off to the side noticed. He was a slim man, maybe forty-five or fifty, graying chestnut hair and thick black brows. He didn’t ask if they knew the parties involved in the crash, but his tone was friendly when he said, “I’m afraid you folks are going to have to return to your car.”

Gaspar waited for Otto to take the lead. Partly because stopping was her idea, but leading was also her job. She pulled out her badge wallet and held it in her left hand as she extended her right to shake, counting on the local guy to return her gesture automatically, which he did.

“Looks like you have your hands full here,” Kim said, friendly too, slipping her badge back into her pocket. Now he’d have to request it if he wanted a closer look. Most times, they didn’t. All cops knew an FBI shield at a glance. Gaspar didn’t offer a glimpse of his. All cops knew FBI agents traveled in pairs.

“Chief Paul Brady, New Hope PD,” he said, a voice that might sing tenor in the church choir. “You must have been diverted here, huh? Sorry to interrupt your work, but thanks for coming so quickly. Rest of your team on the way?”

Brady’s words jolted her spine like a taser strike. Why would a local chief call the FBI on a traffic fatality? Sure, headquarters was only a couple of hours away, but the FBI’s jurisdiction didn’t include traffic crashes under normal circumstances.

Kim injected her tone with cooperative officiousness. “Why’d you call us?”

Chief Brady said, “I didn’t initially. Witnesses said carjacking. Never been common around here and I hadn’t heard the term for at least a decade.”

Carjacking wasn’t FBI jurisdiction, either, but Kim didn’t say so. She figured Brady for a guy who had to tell a story in his own way and his own time. “Uh, huh.”

Brady stuck his paws inside his jacket pockets. “The thing kinda snowballed. First caller reported a rear end collision. I sent a patrol unit out here to process that. A minute or two later, second caller said road rage. Said a huge guy got out of the truck with a shotgun. I quick dispatched another unit. Third caller said the truck driver bashed the Prius’s window with the shotgun butt, dragged the woman out of the Prius and beat her with the gun like it was a club.” Brady wagged his head back and forth as if he couldn’t believe road rage would lead to such savagery, even though he knew it had. “When my officers arrived on the scene, they found the woman battered, the guy dead on the ground, and the boy screaming inside the car. That’s when I grabbed my coat and dashed over here.”

Gaspar shivered in the cold dampness, scowling as Brady’s tale unfolded too slowly. Her partner wasn’t interested in explaining things to annoyed colleagues arriving any moment. Kim knew because she felt the same way.

But she needed to see the big guy under that blanket. She didn’t actually believe Reacher was lying under there. Not really. She didn’t believe he’d been in New Hope at all. Not yesterday or ever. But one quick look would settle it and she was ten feet away and she wasn’t leaving until she knew for sure.

Gaspar prodded Brady to get to the relevant facts supporting FBI jurisdiction. “Domestic terrorists? Contraband in the car? She killed him with an illegal weapon? Guy’s a Native American?”

Brady’s scowl matched Gaspar’s now as the alpha males squared off. Kim intervened to avoid a stalemate, which would be worse than a skirmish at the moment. “You’d know everybody in town, Chief. Who are these folks?”

Maybe Brady didn’t want a skirmish, either. “Well, see, that’s the thing. The Prius is a rental from West Virginia. The F-150 is a Maryland rental. We ran the plates. Both were picked up a week ago using a corporate credit card. We’re running that down now, but we keep hitting dead ends on the paper trail.”

“No ID on the deceased?”

“None.”

“The woman?”

“Says her name is Jill Hill, but she has no ID, either.”

“What about the boy?” Gaspar asked. “He looks like a little man who knows his name and address to me.”

“He is all of that,” Chief Brady’s mouth lifted in a slight grin. “Cute kid. Charmed every one of us. He says his name is Brook and he’s asking if the giant went to climb the beanstalk.”

Kim nodded and took a deep breath. “Let’s go see what you’ve got before any more daylight gets away from us.”

She began walking toward the body, leaving chief Brady and Gaspar no choice but to follow. The F-150 and the Prius were almost bonded together at the crumple, meaning they had to walk around. Kim made her way through small openings between official vehicles attempting to block the crime scene from gawkers. Various personnel were milling around while they waited for the FBI to take over. Kim had no intention of doing so. Her immediate plan was to confirm that Reacher was lying dead under the blanket. Or not.

Depending on how this went, Kim might or might not want to leave. Less than a minute later Otto and Gaspar stood beside the hulking mound. Her body hummed as if she was electrically connected to a power source. This could be him. The assignment would be over. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that; nor did her feelings matter. It was what it was.