Карин Слотер: Cleaning the Gold

In the corner of his eye Reacher saw the so-called Jack Phineas Wolfe take up station behind the next trash can along. It was sponsored by a different company.

Inside the restaurant Baldani moved between tables. Toward the back. Where it all went wrong. At least for the first split second Reacher assumed it all went wrong. For both of them. Both him and Baldani alike. Because sitting at a table in back was Stephanie Lukather. The batshit crazy CO. The full bird colonel. For once in her life she wanted a burger. That day of all days. A terrible coincidence. Baldani would have to abort. He would have to make his excuses and leave. Nothing would happen. Nothing would be seen. Eleven days, with nothing to report.

But no.

It hadn't gone wrong. It had gone right. Baldani sat down opposite Lukather. They looked at each other in a certain way. A little heart-in-mouth, but mostly practiced. They had done this before. Baldani put his hand in his coat and came out with two envelopes. One held a bulging wad. Unmistakable size and shape. Greenbacks, close to two inches thick. Baldani passed it across the table. Lukather took it.

The second envelope held almost nothing. Just a small hard thing, seeking the corner, heavy enough to slide when the envelope was tilted. About the size of a .45 Magnum round. But flatter. Familiar. Tip of his tongue. Like a dumb quiz show on TV. He would be mad with himself when they said the answer.

Baldani passed it over. Lukather took it.

Out of the corner of his eye Reacher saw the so-called Jack Phineas Wolfe melt away. He himself stayed where he was another long minute. Mostly mad. This was now a whole different circus. This was no longer filling out the blanks in a preprinted boilerplate indictment. This would need a whole new investigation all its own. Could take forever.

He slipped back in the shadows and set out walking, a different route, a little longer, but more interesting, including one spot with a corner and then a blind bumped-in alley entrance, where he stepped in smartly, and waited, until the so-called Jack Phineas Wolfe appeared, looking ahead, a little anxious.

Reacher stepped out behind him.

He said, “Howdy.”

Wolfe turned around.

“Oh, hey,” he said.

All kinds of things in his face. No real guile or deception. In fact, regret such things were necessary. Deep down, an honest man.

Reacher asked, “What did you see?”

“See?”

“Back there.”

Wolfe moved his hands, as if rehearsing a sentence, and then added face and eyes, as if wanting to communicate on every level. For a second Reacher thought the only syllables that could fit the rhythm of the movement were, I saw you watching Baldani .

Instead the guy said, “I saw Baldani.”

“Doing what?”

“He gave two envelopes to Lukather.”

“Contents?”

“Lots of cash in the first.”

“Correct,” Reacher said.

“A USB drive in the second.”

Dumb, Reacher thought. I knew that.

Out loud he said, “I don't know who you are, and I don't want to know. But I assume we're on the same side. So do me one favor. At least tell me your name.”

The guy started to say Jack Phineas Wolfe, but Reacher said, “No it isn't.”

The guy said, “Will Trent.”

Back inside the vault, Will carefully wiped dust off the last row of gold bars on the pallet. The overhead light made the Treasury logo and the serial numbers dance across the yellow metal. Inside Will's face mask, his breath had crossed the dew point. The white cotton gloves were glued to his sweaty hands. Lukather had been right about the glamor of the job wearing off quickly. Will's back spasmed as he dead-lifted two bars, turned, then passed them to Reacher.

There was no resting between pivots. Reacher had two hands and one of them was still empty. Not that Will thought of them as hands. They were more like skids on a forklift, because how else could a human being bicep curl almost sixty pounds of gold in each hand like he was lifting sticks of butter?

Will hefted up another two bars, swiveled, and loaded another sixty pounds onto the free skid. He shook out his arms as Reacher all too quickly stacked the bars inside the vault. Megatron wasn't even sweating. Meanwhile, Will's shoulder muscles were clanging like the cymbals on a wind-up monkey.

If he didn't know the guy had perpetrated a murder that took twenty-two years to carry out, Will would've admired his stamina. And also his surveillance skills. Reacher was basically the size of a Ford Pinto, but he'd deftly avoided the security cameras outside the Burger King. There was no way Baldani or Lukather had known that they were being watched.

Did it matter to Will why they were being watched?

He hadn't expected to find Reacher singing in a church choir. The man was a murdering thug, so it made sense that he'd be up to murdering-thug things. Maybe the ex-MP was trying to get in on whatever action Baldani and Lukather had going. One of those envelopes had been filled with a shit-ton of money. Will assumed that the Army paid about as well as the GBI, which was to say they all would've been better off flipping Whoppers. Reacher had been out of the service for years. He lived the life of a twenty-first-century hobo. Will could find no record of him owning a house or car. A toothbrush seemed to be Reacher's only possession, and speaking frankly, that thing had to be a germ factory from staying in his sweaty back pocket all day.

Will bent down and lifted another two bars. He swiveled, placing them in Reacher's outstretched hand, then rotated back, silently reminding himself—

Deputy Phillip Michael Deacon had never held his first grandchild. He had never watched his son play ball. He had never kissed his wife again ...

Will passed over another two bars. It had been a risk to give Reacher his real name. Then again, Will had known the guy would not pull out his phone and google him. Hobos didn't have phones. But hobos needed money. Fifteen bucks an hour was more than most Americans could expect for back-breaking labor that would eventually disable or kill them, but Reacher was a criminal, and criminals generally had easier ways to earn cash. So the question was, why was Reacher following Baldani? Was he trying to hone in on whatever action had netted that fat envelope of cash? Or did he want to beat the asshole into the ground the same way that Will did?

Lukather put the goings-on at a whole other level.

But that was a Lukather problem, not a Will problem.

The shady dealings at the base were not part of his mission statement. The only reason he was in this place at this time was to collect evidence that would put Jack Reacher on death row.

Back in 1997, DNA testing had been in its infancy, and onerously expensive for most police forces. Now, you could practically pull a fart out of the crack in a vinyl chair and have it processed within twenty-four hours. Or, for another example, you could extract DNA from three drops of dried sweat that had fallen over twenty-two years ago onto the pages of a book entitled A Guide to Birds of the Southeastern United States.

The GBI's paper expert had extracted a complete profile from the title page of Chapter 16: Hummingbirds—Beautiful Backyard Warriors . CODIS hadn't returned a match because Jack Reacher's biometrics were not in the system. The obvious next step was to get a judge to sign a warrant compelling Reacher to give a DNA sample, but not even the most red-blooded, flaghugging, eagle-shitting judge in the state of Georgia would sign on that dotted line.

The chain of evidence was not at issue. Will had the GBI's Dry Branch evidence log stating that the library book had been in the state's possession since April 16, 1997, the day that Phillip Michael Deacon was shot. He had the publisher's bill of lading and the shipper's records proving that the book had arrived at the Margrave library on that same morning. He had the 1997 forensic report confirming that the only usable fingerprints were found on the book's cover and belonged to the librarian. He had a sworn statement from that same librarian testifying under penalty of perjury that Stranger 1, who was also Stranger 2, was the only patron she had ever seen handle the book.