Margrave, Georgia
November 2
2:15 p.m.
Harry Black’s house was practically empty. Nothing that could be vacuumed, picked up or bagged remained. The mattress was gone and the linens were gone.
Harry Black’s body was gone.
But his blood was still there. It had oxidized to rusty clumps on the wall pine. Dresser drawers were open and empty. Limp curtains were gone from the frosted jalousie window. The miniscule bathroom and the bedroom closet had been stripped of their meager contents.
There were seven new additions.
Seven perfect round holes, each three inches in diameter, had been made in the pine paneling by a hole cutter saw to collect intact the seven bullets lodged there; two behind the bed and five underneath.
Kim paced the room, as if brisk movement guaranteed fast solutions. “Let’s see if we can figure out what was going on here and get the hell out while we still can, okay? You thought they might be cooking or dealing. Talk to me about that.”
Gaspar said, “It’s not a great theory. I was probably wrong. Bad as it was, this place was way too clean for a meth lab. And meth labs burn down. Average life expectancy is about a month.”
“Agreed,” Kim said. “Better idea?”
He shrugged, said nothing, leaned back, and watched.
Kim reached the room’s corner, turned, and paced the next wall. “Somebody killed Harry Black. We know that. Was it Sylvia?”
He nodded from his fixed position. “She admitted she shot him. I can see it. Pop a guy in the head twice while he’s sleeping. Not too risky. But cold. Sylvia was as calm as any killer I’ve ever seen.” His gaze sought comment; she nodded agreement. “I figure Reacher did the other five post-mortem to cover-up, make it look more like passion.”
“Possible.” She reached the opposite corner, and turned, and increased her speed. “The boss knows Harry’s dead, probably knows how and why. He dispatches us on a pretext? Reacher’s an excuse?”
Gaspar shrugged. “He knows Reacher’s here and involved. Wants to know what’s going on without revealing himself.”
Perhaps. “He knew we’d get here before Sylvia called in the homicide. How?”
He lifted his eyebrow, stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Too complicated.”
“We confront Roscoe about Reacher and she’s relieved to know he’s alive. Means she hasn’t seen him. She’s astonished when she receives the homicide call. So she’s not part of killing Harry.” She reached the next corner and turned to face him across the long diagonal divide. “Do you agree?”
“Maybe,” he said.
Kim said, “Sylvia, as you described it, was too hot for Harry and too hot for this place and had been for years. So why kill him now?”
“Beats me.”
“You’re really not helping, you know that?” She stopped pacing, and then started again. Gaspar approached the three TV tables, examined the recliners positioned at optimum viewing distance, stuffed his hand between the cushions, scanned the rough walls and barren floors.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m thinking maybe hardcore porn. Big potential with a star as hot as Sylvia. Maybe the big screen was for checking the product. Do you see the TV remote?”
“Nothing here. I’ll check the bedroom.” She returned almost instantly. “No.”
There were loud helicopters in the air, coming and going from the cloverleaf. There were sirens in the distance. How much time did they have? She said, “Maybe forensics took the remote. They took everything else that wasn’t nailed down.”
Gaspar moved to the TV, felt around its edges. “No buttons.” He looked behind it. “Articulating wall mount.” He grasped the screen’s edges, and pulled it away from the pine paneling. A scissors-like mounting device allowed the entire television to extend three inches. He said, “Harry’s building skills sucked. Total hack job back here.”
After a minor struggle he disconnected the cables. He peered inside the hole in the wall. “Too dark to see anything.”
“Where’s the video source?” Kim asked.
“There isn’t one.”
Kim glanced at her watch. Forty-five minutes already gone and nothing accomplished but a dead snake.
“I’m working as fast as I can,” Gaspar said.
“Work faster.”
He examined the wall all the way from the front of the house to the bedroom. He checked the bathroom and the closet. He tapped the paneling every six inches.
“OK,” he said.
“OK what?”
“This wall is too wide.”
“Is it?”
“Internal walls are normally four to five inches, depending on the width of the paneling on the studs. This one’s at least twenty-four, maybe thirty.” He tapped the rough pine paneling here and there with his knuckles. “False wall. Runs the entire length of the living room. Maybe twenty-six feet, give or take.”
Kim said, “And I’ve used roomier port-a-johns than that bathroom.”
Gaspar nodded. “The hidden space runs through the bathroom, too. And the closet.” He stepped inside the tiny space. He tapped the walls with his knuckles and knocked with the flat of his hands. “It’s hollow back here. But there’s no access. No hinges or sliding doors. Not even a finger hole.”
Kim squeezed in beside him. Looked at the single shelf. It ran straight across the meager width of the space, maybe twenty-four inches below the ceiling. It was maybe fifteen inches deep. It was anchored to the back wall. There was a sturdy clothes bar solidly attached to its underside. The entire closet was constructed the same as the rest of the home’s interior. Pine paneling, uneven boards, unfinished gaps, poorly made joints between floor, ceiling, and walls.
She said, “I know this sounds dumb, but what if we yank the whole back wall of the closet out? Maybe by hauling on the bar?”
Gaspar looked at the ragged joints which should have been closed seams. “Be damned heavy. No way Sylvia could have done it alone.” He shrugged. “Worth trying, I guess.”
Kim stepped out of the way. Gaspar grabbed the bar with both hands. When he pulled, the back wall flexed. He grunted and pulled twice more before the paneling came away. He tilted the assembly to free it. He breathed hard and heaved the solid pine to one side.
There was a dark expanse behind the wide opening.
Kim felt for a light switch and didn’t find one. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, turned it on, and used its flashlight application to navigate the darkness.
About four feet ahead, a single bulb hung from a white, flat cord fixed to the ceiling. Two more bulbs hung at intervals deeper in the darkness. She approached, pulled each string, and turned the lights on.
She sneezed.
Behind her Gaspar said, “It would have been nice to find something more than dust.”
“We have,” Kim said. “There’s more here than dust.”