Kim stared at Finlay’s business card. There was nothing on it except the phone number. No name. No title. She slapped it back and forth across her fingers. Gaspar said, “Roscoe and Finlay are both as nervous as hens in a fox house every time we ask about Reacher. They’ve got something to hide, and it’s big enough to bury them both. Don’t you think?”
Kim said, “Whatever they’re hiding, it’s something the boss doesn’t know.”
Gaspar raised his right eyebrow.
She said, “Don’t give me that. You’re the one who said he’s not God. Obviously he doesn’t know. Think it through, Zorro.”
“It’s a mystery to me how your mind works, Susie Kwan.” Gaspar moved over to the coffee and poured a cup for each of them before pulling out his laptop. “We’ve got about an hour before our flight to Atlanta. I’m not walking into Margrave again until I know everything Roscoe and Finlay are hiding. No more flailing around in the dark. I’ll find the files Finlay was talking about. Should be easy enough unless they’re sealed. You take Joe Reacher and Sylvia Black.”
He bent his head to his task. She got her phone out. She sent the recording to her secure storage. Then she beamed a copy to her laptop. The audio would be transcribed and available on her laptop in minutes; she’d go through it again on the plane.
She asked, “You still think the Blacks are involved in the Reacher situation somehow?” She wrinkled her nose. The coffee was tepid. She liked her coffee hot.
“It would be stupid not to think so,” Gaspar said.
“Agreed.” And Special Agent Kim Louisa Otto would not fail because she’d been stupid. Not now, not ever. She walked to the window and pulled the heavy drapes open and gazed into the pre-dawn. Airports were fascinating places. Little cities of their own. Then she turned away from the window and rubbed the tension out of her neck and refocused.
She saw she had voice mail from Chief Roscoe’s cell phone. She pressed play. Only a fragment had been recorded due to fluctuating cell tower signals. Roscoe must have been out of range or in a vehicle when she called. “-couldn’t wait? I told you I would handle this. Where did you take her?-”
“Sounds like Roscoe’s ticked off at us again,” Kim said. She put the message on speaker and played it again. Roscoe sounded angry. Gaspar didn’t look up from his screen, but he cocked his head like a wolf hearing distant threats.
Kim played the message twice more. “Makes no sense. What’s she talking about? Did she call you at any point?”
He pulled his phone out to check. “Nothing. What time did she call?”
“Timer says her message came in at 12:33 a.m.” Kim felt herself squint, remembered the white lines around Roscoe’s eyes and made an effort to stop wrinkling her face.
“I doubt she’d appreciate a call back at this hour. It’s got to be after four in the morning.” Gaspar worked his laptop as fast as any college kid. “I’ve got an ace analyst in my office. She could find this stuff in a Miami Minute.”
“Which is what? Two hours?”
“Funny. The point is: I’m getting nowhere. Are you?” He ran a hand through his hair, stood briefly to stretch, and restarted.
“She’s talking about Sylvia, right?”
“Who?”
“Roscoe.”
“Can’t imagine who else she’d be that pissed about, can you?”
“Why would we take Sylvia? Why would anyone? That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
Gaspar shrugged, not looking up from his work. “Our flight leaves in forty minutes.”
“I haven’t been this confused since I tried to learn Mandarin,” she said, not joking.
“What’s to learn? Little oranges in a can.” He glanced at her and said, “Look up Joe Reacher’s date of death. That’ll give us a way to figure out the exact date Jack Reacher arrived in Margrave, right?”
Kim said, “Joe died Thursday, September 4, 1997, about midnight.”
Gaspar stared at her. “Did you just pull that out of thin air?”
She shrugged. “It’s in Jack Reacher’s file. I’ve got a good memory for dates. As in: June 6, 1998, Roscoe’s daughter was born. Jacqueline Roscoe Trent. Nine pounds, two ounces. Thirty inches long. Fair hair. Blue eyes.”
“Big kid,” Gaspar said. “My wife would’ve killed me if any of ours were that size.”
“Beverly Roscoe and David Trent were married on Christmas Day 1997. December 25th. The bride was nearly four months pregnant at the wedding.”
Gaspar pointed and clicked. He said, “Finlay was promoted from Chief of Detectives to Chief of Police on September 30, 1997, after the former top cop died on September 7, 1997. He was called Morrison. Which means that Joe Reacher and this Morrison guy died within three days of each other. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“No, it can’t,” she said. “And I just found Joe Reacher’s obituary.”
“Interesting?”
“Born in Palo, Leyte, Philippines, August 1958, died at the age of 38 years. Parents Stan and Josephine both predeceased him, his only sibling Jack survived him. Educated on military bases around the world, then West Point, then Military Intelligence, and then Treasury.”
“That’s an odd trajectory.”
“You bet. Military Intelligence and Treasury are about as divorced from each other as it’s possible to get and still be in government service. He was killed in the line of duty. As a Treasury agent. Cremated. Ashes scattered in Margrave, Georgia. Which is weird.”
“I know,” Gaspar said. “He was a veteran. Why wasn’t he buried at Arlington?”
“That’s not what’s weird. What’s weird is how a treasury agent gets killed in the line of duty in a sleepy little town like Margrave, Georgia, in September 1997? How would that happen? Why was he even there?”
“Were you even born in 1997?” Gaspar asked.
“There’s no death certificate online. This is nuts. We’re the FBI. The most sophisticated and best equipped and most comprehensive agency in the world. And we can’t get any information from our own sources on an active investigation?”
“Welcome under the radar, baby. If it was easy, they wouldn’t need high-octane talent like us, now would they?” He closed his laptop and began packing up.
“I’m calling Roscoe.”
“Good luck with that.”
She picked up her phone and pressed the call back button.
Gaspar stretched and limped around the room, limbering up. She noticed the limp and knew he was shaking it off. The list of things she intended to discuss with him was already long, but maybe that one should be moved to the top. She put the call on speaker while she shoved cords into her bag and pulled the zippers. Roscoe’s cell rang ten times, twelve, fifteen. Then Roscoe’s angry voice filled the room. It said: “You better tell me your ass is back in Margrave and you have Sylvia Black with you.”
Gaspar tapped his wrist with his finger to show her time was ticking. Kim said, “Chief Roscoe, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Save it, Agent Otto. I’ve got the guy’s card right here in front of me. L. Mark Newton, Esquire. From Washington D.C. He had a Federal Marshal with him, for God’s sake. You sent them down here to pick up Sylvia. In the middle of the night when I wasn’t here to stop them. You know it. I know it. And I want her back. Whatever it is you want with her, you can get in the damn line behind me.”
“We don’t have her.”
“Save it,” Roscoe said again. “Just get her back here, or I’ll make you sorry. Are we clear?”
“Look, we don’t have her. But we’re on our way. See you before noon.”
The call died.
Gaspar said, “There’s one truly major flaw in that story.”
“Which is?”
“L. Mark Newton died last year,” he said.
"I know. I was at the funeral."