Margrave, Georgia
November 3
12:45 a.m.
She was submerged in deep slow-wave sleep, like a dolphin, maintaining only enough consciousness to remain wary of predators. She bobbed gently, down and up, each soft bounce tugging her higher until at one apex her eyelids fluttered. An orange glow inches from her nose showed 12:45 a.m. She’d been asleep three hours.
But now she was awake.
Because: there was hushed shouting in the house. Echolocation placed two women safely distant. One older, one younger, both angry. She recognized Roscoe’s voice.
Roscoe’s guest room was cozy. The temperature was perfect. Quilted goose down enveloped in fine cotton created a warm cocoon. She snuggled deeper, drifted lightly on sleep’s surface, still aware. She sighed.
Return to nirvana demanded a glass of water and a pee. She listened, heard no silenced screaming, concluded quick stealth was now possible. Where was the bathroom? Down the hall, she thought, near the kitchen.
Vision limited through eyelids too heavy to lift, she moved toward the door, turned left, and shuffled along the carpet. A computer screen’s soft night-light glow guided her progress. There were warm aromas she couldn’t identify. Wood smoke, maybe? And something sweeter.
She reached the archway and stepped into cold open space. She recalled the kitchen on the left, a den on the right, the guest bath straight ahead.
Then the whole room lit up. Instant blindness. Kim’s forearm flew up to shield her eyes. A tall, slender blonde girl had opened the refrigerator door. That was the light. The girl was holding a bottle of beer. She turned, saw Kim, and cocked her wrist, ready to throw the bottle.
“Who are you?” she asked. “And what are you doing in my house?”
The girl was very pretty. She was dressed in ragged jeans and a sloppy sweater and heavy mud-covered boots. She was backlit by the refrigerator. She was a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than Kim, and she looked very capable. Kim figured the bottle would hit her dead center in the head, if the kid got around to throwing it.
Then from the shadows on Kim’s right, Roscoe said, “Cut the drama, Jack. Does she look like a home invader? Bare feet? Red silk pajamas?”
The girl didn’t stand down even a smidge.
Only one choice.
Kim prepared to run rather than hurt the girl.
Roscoe said, “Kim, this is my daughter Jacqueline, known to all as Jack for short, which as you can see, she isn’t."
Jack? Kim felt like she'd been punched in the gut. Reacher's kid?
"Jack, this is my friend, Kim. But you’d know that already if you’d met your curfew.”
Still Jack didn’t stand down.
Roscoe said, “I’m sorry we woke you, Kim. We don’t normally assault our houseguests. Jack apologizes as well. Don’t you, Jack?”
The girl relaxed, loosened up, shrugged, and put the beer back on the shelf.
“Whatever,” she said, like a fifteen year-old.
She closed the refrigerator door.
Darkness.
Instant blindness.
“Another friend is sleeping upstairs,” Roscoe said. “Don’t wake him. Or your brother.”
The girl said nothing.
Roscoe said, “Goodnight, Jack.”
The girl walked upstairs with a heavy tread, grinding mud into the carpet. Roscoe must have been too exhausted to notice.
A door opened. A door closed.
The house went quiet again.
Kim shivered. High-tech microfiber pajamas packed flat for travel, but were not warm enough for November in Georgia.
“Hot chocolate?” Roscoe asked.
“I’m fine,” Kim said.
“Translation: You’ve got questions and I can’t sleep.”
“I’m dead on my feet. I won’t be very good company.”
Translation:Or sharp enough to learn anything from you that I don’t already know.
“Archie Leach wants to question you. I held him off tonight, but I had to tell him where you were. I’ve had other calls, too. This may be the last chance we get.”
Kim dropped into an oversized chair and tucked her bare feet beside her on the seat. Roscoe handed her a mug. Kim recognized the sweet aroma unidentified during her somnolent wandering. Sipping chocolate, spiked with something stronger. Whiskey, she thought.
“Jack’s a pretty girl,” she said, after the silence stretched a while.
Roscoe smiled. “You didn’t see the sign out front flashing ‘smoking hot girl inside, bad boys wanted?’”
Kim smiled too. “My dad threatened a ten foot fence around our property to keep the boys away when my sister was about Jack’s age.”
“Did it work?” Roscoe sounded hopeful.
Kim sipped the warm chocolate, laid her head back against the chair. “Keeping the boys out wasn’t the problem, actually. The problem was keeping my sister in.”
“Exactly,” Roscoe said. “She misses her curfews. She doesn’t return my calls. She texts until all hours. She won’t get up for school. Her grades are a mess.” She ran splayed fingers through her hair cut. “And now she’s sneaking out in the middle of the night.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could lock her in a closet until she’s twenty-one. You could hire a crone to bring her bread and water.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. When Jack was born, every moment away from her was torture. And now, after five minutes in the same room I want to slap her. But what would I do if she hit me back?”
“Shoot straight?”
Roscoe laughed.
Kim said, “Makes you want to call your mother and apologize, doesn’t it?”
“Every single day.”
“You know it’s a phase, Beverly. A necessary rite of passage.” She sighed. “If I’d gone through the bad boy thing at fifteen instead of twenty, my life would have been a lot different. I wouldn’t be sitting here now, at the very least.”
“Did he straighten up? Your bad boy?”
“You know the stats as well as anyone, chief. Bad boys get worse, not better. If you really want an update I guess I could check the prison database. Or the morgue.”
“Kids?” Roscoe asked.
Kim shook her head in horror, hard enough to make her vision swim. “With him? Tied to him forever? Seeing him every time I looked at the kid? Always, always, wondering if his sorry genes would win out no matter how hard I worked to be sure they didn’t? Definitely not.”
Roscoe stared into the fire. “Wise choice, Agent Otto. Good cop is a lot easier than good mother.”
She lifted a slim remote, pressed a button, and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 filled the room.
Kim asked, “Would it be so bad? If you lose the job over the Harry Black thing? It’s not easy to be the boss, even in a sleepy small-town cop shop. You could move into something less demanding. Spend more time with Jack. Get her straightened out.”
Roscoe replied, “Don’t worry about me, Kim. Old man Kliner made my career fifteen years ago. Before that, Margrave wasn’t even on the map. But when Kliner blew up, I became a star around here. Never would have happened without him. Maybe he’s about to do it again. Ever consider that? I’ve got no regrets.” She hesitated slightly. “I just liked my kid better before.”
“Before what?”
“Before she grew boobs.”
“And she was late coming home tonight?”
Roscoe sighed again, as if she carried Atlas-sized burdens on a frame much too small. She folded both hands together and brought them to her chin, leaned her head forward, rubbed lower lip with one knuckle. She said, “The sneaking out started three nights ago.”
Which had been the night before Harry Black’s murder. Timing might not be everything, but opportunity leads to crimes and suspects. No wonder the momma hen was so upset about her chick. “You’re worried that Jack is somehow connected to the Black case?”
Roscoe seemed relieved that Kim had finally caught up. “I know Jack had nothing to do with what happened out at Harry’s place Sunday night.”
“How sure are you about that?” Kim’s gut said Roscoe wasn’t as certain as she’d like to be. Worried cop, terrified mom. Simple equation.
“Very sure,” Roscoe said. “I checked. Personally.”
“Gaspar thinks Harry and Sylvia were into porn. He thinks that’s how they collected and laundered the Kliners. You think Jack’s been participating in that?”
Instant alarm widened Roscoe’s eyes. “No! Of course not!”
“You think she helped Sylvia cover up the murder and escape?”
“No.”
Less volume, but more worry. Getting closer.
“You think she’s been out with Jack Reacher for the past three nights?”
Roscoe took a breath and held it. Her hands fell limp into her lap.
Bingo?
But then Roscoe relaxed. She grinned. “Of all the possibilities I considered when Jack didn’t come home the night my sergeant was murdered, Agent Otto, I never once worried that my daughter was cavorting until the wee hours with Jack Reacher.”
Kim thought Roscoe was telling the truth.
Too bad.
She asked, “How do you know?”
Roscoe actually giggled. Maybe it was the whiskey. “Honey, you are so far off the mark you can’t even see the bulls-eye.”
Kim sat straighter in her chair. “OK, I get it. You don’t think Reacher’s involved in the Sylvia Black case at all. At least tell me straight out. Why not?”
“To begin with, if Reacher was in town, I’d know it. He’d have contacted me, or someone would have seen him. He’s a big guy. He’s obviously not from around here. He’d stand out. That’s how he got arrested fifteen years ago. He couldn’t sneak in and out of Margrave without someone knowing.”
Wishful thinking. The guy was a ghost. He’d slipped into and out of tighter places without any trouble, whenever he wanted to. “And?”
Roscoe took a big gulp of liquid courage. “When you mentioned the possibility that Reacher was involved with Sylvia, I’ll admit, you threw me.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
“And rescuing women like Sylvia is exactly the kind of thing he might do. So I checked your theory out. And it wasn’t him.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” Roscoe said, sounding like her daughter.
“You’re clairvoyant? You have a crystal ball? Tarot cards?”
“Have you learned nothing about the man, hot shot? Reacher wouldn’t do any of it.”
“Really? You’re saying Reacher wouldn’t kill anyone? Because twelve people died when he was here fifteen years ago and I’m thinking that was no coincidence.” Kim knew she should have stopped right there even as she barreled on. “Don’t try to sell me that line of bull, Beverly. Makes you look like Bonnie to his Clyde.” Brief pause. Oh, what the hell. “Again.”
Roscoe said, “You know, Kim, even Reacher would hurt you for that remark.”
“Because it’s true?”
“Because it isn’t. You don’t know Jack. At all.”
“So enlighten me.”
“His brother Joe died because of that money. Jack would never profit from Joe’s death like that. He wouldn’t shoot a sleeping enemy instead of taking him face-on. And he’d never spend his time cleaning up like that. Not his style.”
“No?”
“Definitely not.”
“What would he have done, then?”
“If he’d killed Harry for the Kliners, which he didn’t, he’d have destroyed Harry’s place completely. He didn’t blow up the Chevy, either. So don’t even start with that idea.”
“And you know this because?”
The music changed to Chopin's Nocturne #2 and filled the room with discordant peace.
Roscoe seemed to reach a decision. She wiped her face again. She settled her shoulders. She said, “Reacher left here bound for Chicago back then and I’ve never heard from him since. What I wanted to tell you tonight is that it wasn’t him. On the video tape. Springing Sylvia last night. The fake Marshall Wright. Not Jack Reacher. Definitely. Not. Him.”
“Evidence? Facts?” Kim asked. “And don’t tell me you just know, Beverly.”
Roscoe stood, moved to the fireside, turned her back toward the room. “Reacher’s taller. Bigger build. Boxier shoulders. Straighter posture. Longer reach. Deeper voice. Different walk.”
"Maybe he's changed in fifteen years," Kim said.
Roscoe paused again, and turned to face Kim from across the room. She made her next observations in a softer tone, confirming Kim’s instincts about her relationship with Reacher in every respect. She said, “Reacher’s wrists are thicker, and his hands too broad for the gloves in the video. He’s kinder to women. He wouldn’t grab Sylvia’s arm or push her into the car like that. He displays more finesse. He’s much smarter. It radiates off of him. And he’s a very cautious guy. If he had collected Sylvia Black from our jail, no evidence would ever connect him to the escape, just as there’s no evidence he was ever here fifteen years ago. Simply put, if Reacher had been here that night, we’d have no video to analyze.”
Kim was quiet for a spell. She’d made too many assumptions. The assumptions had led to false starts and wasted time. She didn’t know Jack Reacher, and the not knowing frightened her more than anything else. But Roscoe had known Jack Reacher in every conceivable way back then. That was clear. So unless he’d changed more than a man is capable of changing, Roscoe was right.
Dammit.
“So who was the guy on the tape?” Kim asked.
“You tell me.”
“I would if I could,” Kim said. Then she heard Gaspar coming down the stairs.