Lee Child: Never Go Back

The captain was a serious dark guy of about thirty, and his ACU nametape said his name was Weiss. He looked honest and decent and reasonably friendly, so Reacher said, ‘This is just a personal matter, captain. Not even remotely official. And I’m probably a little toxic right now, so you should proceed with extreme caution. You should keep this visit off the record. Or refuse to talk to me altogether.’

Weiss said, ‘Toxic how?’

‘Looks like something I did sixteen years ago has come back to bite me in the ass.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I don’t remember. No doubt someone will remind me soon enough.’

‘The computer says you were just recalled.’

‘Correct.’

‘I never heard of that before.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Doesn’t sound good. Like someone really wanted you back in the jurisdiction.’

Reacher nodded. ‘That’s how I took it. Like I was being extradited out of civilian life. To face the music. But it was a much simpler procedure. There was no kind of a hearing.’

‘You think they’re serious?’

‘Feels that way at the moment.’

‘What do you need from me?’

‘I’m looking for Major Susan Turner of the 110th MP.’

‘Why?’

‘Like I said, it’s personal.’

‘Connected with your problem?’

‘No. Not in any way.’

‘But you were with the 110th, right?’

‘A long time before Major Turner got anywhere near it.’

‘So you’re not subverting testimony or coaching a witness?’

‘Absolutely not. This is a different matter entirely.’

‘Are you a friend of hers?’

‘I was hoping that might be a future development. Or not, depending on what I think of her when I meet her.’

‘You haven’t met her yet?’

‘Is she here?’

Weiss said, ‘In a cell. Since yesterday afternoon.’

‘What’s the charge?’

‘She took a bribe.’

‘From who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How much of a bribe?’

‘I’m just a jailer,’ Weiss said. ‘You know how it is. They don’t give me chapter and verse.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘Visiting hours are over.’

‘How many guests have you got tonight?’

‘Just her.’

‘So you’re not busy. And we’re off the record, right? So no one will know.’

Weiss opened up a green three-ring binder. Notes, procedures, standing orders, some of them printed, some of them handwritten. He said, ‘She seems to have been expecting you. She passed on a request through her lawyer. She mentioned you by name.’

‘What’s the request?’

‘It’s more of an instruction, really.’

‘Saying what?’

‘She doesn’t want to see you.’

Reacher said nothing.

Weiss looked down at the three-ring binder and said, ‘Quote, per the accused’s explicit request, under no circumstances is Major Jack Reacher, U.S. Army, Retired, former commander of the 110th MP, to be granted visitation privileges.’

SEVEN

GETTING OUT OF the Joint Base was only marginally quicker than getting in. Each of the three guard shacks checked ID and conducted a trunk search, to make sure Reacher was who he said he was, and hadn’t stolen anything. Then after clearing the last of the barriers he threaded his way along the same route the local bus had taken. But he stopped early, and pulled in at the kerb. There were plenty of highway ramps all around. There was I-395, spearing south and west. There was the George Washington Memorial Parkway, heading north and west. There was I-66, heading due west. There was I-395 going east, if he wanted it. All of them quiet and flowing fast. There was a big country out there. There was I-95, all the way up and down the eastern seaboard, and the West Coast, five days away, and the vast interior, empty and lonely.

They couldn’t find you before. They won’t find you now.

A new discharge, this time without honour .

She doesn’t want to see you .

Reacher moved off the kerb and drove back to the motel.

The two guys with the T-shirts were gone. Evidently they had gotten up and staggered off somewhere. Reacher left their car on the kerb two hundred yards away. He left the key in the ignition and the doors unlocked. Either it would be stolen by a couple of punks, or the two guys would come back to get it. He really didn’t care which.

He walked the last of the distance and let himself into his dismal room. He had been right. The shower was weak and strangled, and the towels were thin, and the soap was small, and the shampoo was cheap. But he cleaned up as well as he could, and then he went to bed. The mattress felt like a sack stuffed with balled-up plastic, and the sheets felt damp with disuse. But he fell asleep just fine. He set the alarm in his head for seven, and he breathed in, and he breathed out, and that was it.

Romeo dialled Juliet again and said, ‘He just tried to make contact with Turner over at Dyer. And failed, of course.’

Juliet said, ‘Our boys must have missed him at the motel.’

‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Yes, you too.’

Reacher didn’t make it to seven o’clock. He was woken at six, by a brisk tap at the door. It sounded businesslike. Not threatening. Tap, tap, tappity tap . Six o’clock in the morning, and someone was already cheerful. He slid out of bed and hauled his pants out from under the mattress and put them on. The air in the room was sharp with cold. He could see his breath. The heater had been off all night.

He padded barefoot across the sticky carpet and opened the door. A gloved hand that had been ready to tap again was pulled back quickly. The hand was attached to an arm, which was attached to a body, which was in a Class A army uniform, with JAG Corps insignia all over it. A lawyer.

A woman lawyer.

According to the plate on the right side of her tunic her name was Sullivan. She was wearing the uniform like a business suit. She had a briefcase in her non-tapping hand. She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t particularly short, but her eye line was level with Reacher’s shirtless chest, where there was an old .38 bullet wound, which seemed to preoccupy her.

Reacher said, ‘Yes?’

Her car was behind her, a dark-green domestic sedan. The sky was still black.

She said, ‘Major Reacher?’

She was in her mid-thirties, Reacher guessed, a major herself, with short dark hair and eyes that were neither warm nor cold. He said, ‘How can I help you?’

‘It’s supposed to be the other way around.’

‘You’ve been assigned to represent me?’

‘For my sins.’

‘For the recall appeal or the Juan Rodriguez thing or the Candice Dayton thing?’

‘Forget the recall appeal. You’ll get five minutes in front of a panel about a month from now, but you won’t win. That never happens.’

‘So Rodriguez or Dayton?’

‘Rodriguez,’ Sullivan said. ‘We need to get right to it.’ But she didn’t move. Her gaze traced its way downward, to his waist, where there was another scar, by that point more than a quarter century old, a big ugly white starfish overlaid by crude stitches, cut through by a knife wound, which was much more recent, but still old.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Aesthetically I’m a mess. But come in anyway.’

She said, ‘No, I think I’ll wait in the car. We’ll talk over breakfast.’

‘Where?’

‘There’s a diner two blocks away.’

‘You paying?’

‘For myself. Not for you.’

‘Two blocks away? You could have brought coffee.’

‘Could have, but didn’t.’

‘Some big help you’re going to be. Give me eleven minutes.’