Карин Слотер - Cleaning the Gold

What Will did not have was a legal foundation to force Jack Reacher to hand over his DNA.

In the arresting-people business, Will had run into what was called the Combo-Key Paradox, which went like this: Say there was a bad guy who'd stashed incriminating evidence in a safe. If the safe had a combination lock, the police could not force the guy to give them the combination. But if the safe required a key to open, then the cops could compel the guy to give them the key.

The courts had extrapolated this contents of the mind reasoning to everything from opening your phone with your fingerprint to using your biometrics to unlock your computer. As far as self-incrimination went, there was nothing more self than your physical person. Your thoughts, like remembering a combination or a phone passcode, belonged solely to you. Your fingerprints, your eyes, your face, the shape of your ears, your walking gait, and especially your DNA—these were yours alone, and the courts were loath to turn them against you without a damn good cause.

Fortunately for Will, there were other ways to legally collect a suspect's DNA.

“Baldani,” Reacher said.

Will looked up the hallway for the major, but the douchebag was still outside taking a smoke break with the rest of the cleaning team.

Reacher was apparently taking his own break. The man hadn't spoken a word for over two hours, but now, he pulled down his white surgical mask. He leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed over what had to be a fiftyinch chest.

Will pulled down his own mask. “What about Baldani?”

Reacher said, “I wonder if you guys know more about him than we do.”

Will had no idea what he was talking about.

He said, “You first.”

Reacher said, “We know the major runs a loan shark network all over town. He breaks little girls' legs. That's why I was sent here. You?”

Will didn't volunteer a justification for his own presence. “Lukather is in on it.”

The statement was obvious, because they had both seen the colonel take the envelope, but instead of pointing this out, Reacher peeled off his busted gloves and shoved them into his back pocket.

Will thought about the cotton absorbing the sweat on Reacher's hands. The nasty toothbrush with all of that glorious DNA living inside the bristles. If Reacher discarded any of these items—threw them in the trash, left them on a park bench, abandoned them at the gates of the fort, then legally, Will could pick them up and test them for DNA.

Reacher said, “Two envelopes. One full of cash.”

Will played along. “Baldani wanted Lukather to take the envelopes from him out in the open. Public place, plenty of security cameras and eyewitnesses.”

“Insurance policy,” Reacher said. “Mutually assured destruction.”

Will felt a cramp in his neck. He wasn't used to having to look up to have a conversation. And the way Reacher pulled out his cotton gloves and started to force them back onto his thick fingers said he had also figured out that Will was not much use to him.

Which was bad.

Will quickly ran through his options. The toothbrush was still in Reacher's back pocket, an area where lingering would be discouraged. Reacher hadn't replaced his gloves for new ones, and judging by the grime, cleanliness wasn't a priority. The surgical mask wasn't going anywhere. Reacher wasn't drinking from a bottle of water. He didn't smoke or chew gum or spit. There were no cuts on his skin, but he probably bled hydraulic fluid anyway. If Will was going to collect a discarded DNA sample without Reacher's knowledge or consent, he would have to keep close and wait for him to make a mistake.

Will said, “We should probably get a look at that USB drive.”

Reacher didn't call out the we , but he stopped with the gloves, waiting for the rest.

“I don't want to go all Operation Grand Slam here, but Lukather is in charge of all the gold inside this building.” He waited, but Reacher didn't take the bait. “Baldani's a blunt object. Lukather is the one swinging him around.

Let's say this is bigger than loan-sharking and leg-breaking. That USB drive could—”

Reacher leaned down and gripped one of the bars in his fist. The metal flashed brilliant, casting his face in yellow. He stood up. He showed Will the bar like there weren't eleventy billion more where that came from. He said, “I saw a James Bond movie with a car made of gold. The weight makes me wonder how it got out of the parking lot.”

He was talking about Auric Goldfinger's Rolls-Royce. Teenage Will had studied the car more closely than any Playboy , and for far longer stretches of time. “It was a Phantom III '37. The last V12 until the Silver Seraph. Coilspring chassis, semi-elliptical spring in the rear. The brakes would have to be beefed up, but he had the resources.”

“I was told ten miles per gallon at top speed. Let's say you get eight touring the countryside. Not counting the extra torque required to haul the gold.”

“And the umbrella.” Will saw his point. “The tank holds, what—25 gallons?”

“I was told 39.5.”

Will worked out a few statistics of his own. “Damn.”

Reacher said, “One of us is going to have to hit Baldani.”

Will felt his eyebrows touch his hairline.

“Then, the other steps in to break it up.”

Will couldn't wait to hear the rest of the plan.

Reacher explained, “Baldani's going to run to the colonel. The colonel will want to talk to the perpetrator and the witness. She'll separate us. One in her office, the other in a different room, to make sure our stories square.”

“And?”

Reacher stacked the gold inside the vault. “The USB drive will be somewhere in her office. She can only talk to one of us at a time. Whoever lands in her office needs to look for it. Preferably steal it, but I'm okay with just looking at what's on the drive to make sure she's not planning to make the nation's gold supply radioactive for the next fifty-seven years.”

“Fifty-eight, to be exact.'” Will saw a gaping hole in the plan. “She'll kick us both off the base. If we don't end up in the brig.”

“A brig is on a ship. We'd be confined to the stockade, Captain Wolfe.” Reacher didn't dwell on Will's mistake. “Lukather told me she's out of here next month, taking full retirement. She's one, maybe two days away from breaking her last record for cleaning the gold. We're her best workers. She wants to go out on a high note. Trust me, she'll give us a stern warning, then put us back to work. This is the Army. What's best for the officer is what happens.”

Will thought about it. “What's our squared story?”

Reacher shrugged. “Baldani's an asshole.”

He wasn't wrong.

Reacher said, “I'll give him a tap. Just enough to make him bleed.”

Will knew there had to be an easier way to get into the colonel's office, but there was a part of Reacher's plan that really appealed to him. “I'll hit Baldani.”

“It should be me.”

“No, really, I'll do it.” Will felt a ripple of anticipation along the back of his punching-hand. “We need to stun him, not turn his jaw into a Hula-Hoop around his neck.”

Reacher didn't argue the point, which reminded Will of the great capacity for violence that raged inside of Jack Reacher. He was an ex-cop who had shot another cop twice in the head. Once a man crossed that line, it was easier to cross the next one, then the next. Jack Reacher had probably spent the last twenty-two years stomping over every line that got in his way.

“Hey, shitbrains.” Baldani announced his return by clomping his boots down the hallway like a tiny horse. “Shut your cock holsters and get back to work.”

Will waited for him to get close, then punched him in the face.