Lee Child: James Penney's New Identity

The forty-year-old hippy lined up to sign in and collect his badge. He was behind a couple of uniforms with some guy in handcuffs. One desk sergeant on duty. A wait. He scanned the bulletins on the back wall. High risk of forest fire. Missing children. Then a face stared out at him. An APB teletype. James Penney. Laney, California. Arson and criminal damage.

“Shit,” he said. Loudly.

The desk sergeant and the cops with the cuffed guy all turned to look at him.

“That guy,” he said. “James Penney. I just drove him all the way over here through the mountains.”

The sheriff in Laneytook the call from Sacramento. He was busy closing out the files on the previous day’s activity. The DWIs, the broken windows, the smashed windshield, the small stuff. The Penney file was already in the drawer, just waiting for Kolek’s formal ID to tie it up.

“Penney?” he said to the Sacramento desk sergeant. “No, he’s dead. Crashed and burned on the road out to Vegas, last night.”

Then he hung up, but he was a conscientious guy, and cautious, so he found the number for the morgue down in L.A. He was stretching his hand out for the phone when it rang again. It was Kolek, calling on his mobile, straight from the dissecting table.

“What?” the sheriff asked, although he already knew what from Kolek’s voice.

“Two main problems,” Kolek said. “The teeth are nowhere near. Penney had a bridge across the front. Cheap dentures. These are real teeth.”

“And?” the sheriff asked. “What else?”

“This is a woman,” Kolek said.

Penney had finished his mealin the Sacramento burger shack when he saw the four police cruisers arrive. He had a dollar on the table for the waitress and was getting up ready to leave. He had actually lifted off the sticky vinyl bench and was sliding out sideways when he caught sight of them. Four cruisers, playing leapfrog along the strip of motels. The cops were going into each office in turn, a sheaf of papers in their hands, coming out, sliding along to the next office. Penney sat back down. Stared out at them through the window. Watched them leapfrog south until they were out of sight. Then he stood up and left. Turned up the collar on his leather jacket and walked north, not quickly, not slowly, holding his breath.

The Laney sheriff was on the phone. He had tracked Penney to his bank. He was aware of the big cash withdrawal yesterday. He had looked at the road on the map, Laney to Mojave, and he’d guessed correctly about the northward dash along the flank of Mount Whitney. He’d called gas stations, one after the other, working north through the phone book, until he found a pump jockey who remembered a red Firebird whose driver had paid from a thick wad of cash.

Then he’d done some mental arithmetic, speed and distance and time, and started calling a thin cluster of motels in the area he figured Penney had reached at the end of the day. Second number, he’d found the right place, the Pine Park Holiday Motel up near Yosemite. Penney had checked in at about nine o’clock, car and all, name and plate number right there on the desk guy’s carbon.

Beyond that, there was no further information. The sheriff called the nearest police department, ten miles south of the motel. No report of a stolen Firebird. No other missing automobiles. No knowledge of a woman car thief in the locality. So the sheriff called the Mojave General Motors dealership and asked for the value of an eighteen-month-old Firebird, clean, low-mileage. He added that amount to the bank’s figure for the cash withdrawal. Penney had rendezvoused at the motel and sold his car to the dead woman and was on the run with nearly fifteen grand in his pants pocket. A lot of money. It was clear. Obvious. Penney had planned, and prepared.

The sheriff opened his map again. The Sacramento sighting had been just plain luck. So now was the time to capitalize on it. He wouldn’t be aiming to stay there. Too small, State capital, too well policed. So he’d be moving on. Probably up to the wilds of Oregon or Washington State. Or Idaho or Montana. But not by plane. Not with cash. Paying cash for an air ticket out of a California city is the same thing as begging to be arrested for narcotics trafficking. So he’d be aiming to get out by road. But Sacramento was a city with an ocean not too far away to the left, and high mountains to the right. Fundamentally six roads out, was all. So six roadblocks would do it, maybe on a ten-mile radius so the local commuters wouldn’t get snarled up. The sheriff nodded to himself and picked up the phone to call the Highway Patrol.

It started raining in Sacramento at dusk. Steady, wetting rain. Northern California, near the mountains, very different from what Penney was used to. He was hunched in his jacket, head down, walking north, trying to decide if he dared hitch a ride. The police cruisers at the motel strip had unsettled him. He was tired and demoralized and alone. And wet. And conspicuous. Nobody walked anywhere in California. He glanced over his shoulder at the traffic stream and saw a dull olive Chevrolet sedan slowing behind him. It came to a stop and a long arm stretched across and opened the passenger door. The dome light clicked on and shone on the soaked roadway.

“Want a ride?” the driver called.

Penney ducked down and glanced inside. The driver was a very tall man, about thirty, muscular, built like a regular weightlifter. Short fair hair, rugged open face. Dressed in uniform. Army uniform. Penney read the insignia and registered: military police captain. He glanced at the dull olive paint on the car and saw a white serial number stenciled on the flank.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Get in out of the rain,” the driver said. “A vet like you knows better than to walk in the rain, right?”

Penney slid inside. Closed the door.

“How do you know I’m a vet?” he asked.

“The way you walk,” the driver said. “And your age, and the way you look. Guy your age looking like you look and walking in the rain didn’t beat the draft for college, that’s for damn sure.”

Penney nodded.

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I did a jungle tour, seventeen years ago.”

“So let me give you a ride,” the driver said. “A favor, one soldier to another. Consider it a veteran’s benefit.”

“OK,” Penney said.

“Where you headed?” the driver asked.

“I don’t know,” Penney said. “North, I guess.”

“OK, north it is,” the driver said. “I’m Jack Reacher. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Penney said nothing.

“You got a name?” the guy called Reacher asked.

Penney hesitated.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Reacher put the car in drive and glanced over his shoulder. Eased back into the traffic stream. Clicked the switch and locked the doors.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“Do?” Penney repeated.

“You’re running,” Reacher said. “Heading out of town, walking in the rain, head down, no bag, don’t know what your name is. I’ve seen a lot of people running, and you’re one of them.”

“You going to turn me in?”

“I’m a military cop,” Reacher said. “You done anything to hurt the Army?”

“The Army?” Penney said. “No, I was a good soldier.”

“So why would I turn you in?”

Penney looked blank.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What did you do to the civilians?” Reacher asked.

“You’re going to turn me in,” Penney said, helplessly.

Reacher shrugged at the wheel.

“Well, that depends,” he said. “What did you do?”

Penney said nothing. Reacher turned his head and looked straight at him. A powerful silent stare, hypnotic intensity in his eyes, held for a hundred yards of road.