Washington, DC
November 3
6:35 p.m.
Kim paced the room for a solid half hour, seeking solutions, but getting nothing except impatient and thirty minutes older. Gaspar waited quietly, butt in chair, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, hands folded, eyes closed. He said, “We could follow orders for once. We could deliver Sylvia in the morning. And return to normal life.”
His laconic style was familiar to her by then, but no less maddening. “But don’t you feel like a first class patsy? And what do we tell Roscoe? Have you even thought about that? She’s going down in flames and Sylvia walks free? Again? Sixty-seven million dollars richer? And Cooper, too? Does that seem right to you? And what about Reacher? Do we leave him out there doing God knows what to God knows whom?”
No response.
Her hands balled into fists. “Well?”
“Tantrums never work on me,” he said, unmoved. “But anyway, in answer to your questions, in order of asking, yes, I don’t know, yes, sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks, no, don’t care, sucks, deep subject.”
She was not amused. “Are you going to help me or not?”
He stood and stretched. He limped around the spacious room. He stopped outside the door to Sylvia’s bedroom and stared as if he had x-ray vision or supersonic hearing. He ran a hand through his hair. He limped some more. He returned to his seat.
He said, “Of course, I’ll help you. But with what? There’s something going on here, and it’s buried deep. I don’t even know what it is, let alone know how to prove it. We turn all this over to an internal investigations unit and they fail, too, and then what? Give me a stroke of genius and I’ll be there. Otherwise, I don’t see any options except deliver Sylvia in the morning.”
She sighed.
He pressed. “Any bright ideas? Preferably something that won’t get us fired? Did I mention I have a large family?”
She said nothing.
He said, “That’s what I thought. You got zilch.”
He was wrong, technically. She had one desperate, last-ditch option. But she didn’t describe it. Maybe she would never need to. Maybe something else would come along.
She went back to pacing. She talked as she walked. “Roscoe said Archie Leach is howling because we left before he debriefed us. He wants vengeance for his brother.”
Gaspar said, “We didn’t kill his brother. So how is Archie Leach our problem?”
“Cooper called you after the fire in the mailbox store.”
“Right.”
“He asked you about Sylvia’s mail. You told him everything. The smashed mailbox theory, forwarded envelopes, the list of box holders, and how you found her mug shot.”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t ask to see the list?”
“No.”
“That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“You saw the list just like I did. His name is on it. And so is mine. And yours. He wasn’t even interested?”
Blandly, like he was calming a suicide, Gaspar said, “But I didn’t know all that when I was talking to him. You took the list with you, remember? To the bar? In your pocket?”
“But he had to know, right? So it’s weird that he didn’t ask or deal with it somehow, isn’t it?”
“You’re wearing me out.”
“Isn’t it?”
“We’ve been over this, Sunshine. All we have is the list. Nothing else. If it comes to it, he’ll say he has no idea why his name was on the list, and he’ll say he didn’t have a mailbox at Bernie’s, and we’ll believe him, because we have no idea why our names were on the list either, and we sure didn’t have mailboxes at Bernie’s.”
“Cooper is involved with Sylvia.”
“Sex is not illegal.”
“Sylvia laundered the money and stole it from Harry and killed him.”
“Maybe so. No proof, though. And nothing connecting Cooper to any of that.”
When she didn’t raise anything else, he said, “Can I go to sleep now?”
She patted herself down, checked her gun and her pockets, and walked toward the door.
Stretched out in his chair, eyes closed, Gaspar asked, “Where are you going?”
“To call Finlay.”
He didn’t move so much as an eyelid. But his tone conveyed every catastrophic consequence she’d already argued in her head. “If anybody asks, you’re on your own. I’ve got a family to feed. Did I mention that? Twenty years left. Fit for no other work. Not even fit for this, to be honest. I’m a charity case. You can throw your career out the window, but please don’t add mine to the landfill while you’re at it.”
“Cooper’s not God, you know,” she reminded him, in his own words.
“He’s the God of my family dinner. And yours, too. Whatever special relationship you think you two have, Sunshine, make no mistake. He’ll throw you under the train in a Hot’lanta second and never look back.”
Only one choice.
She opened the door. Looked back. He hadn’t moved.
“I was wrong about you,” she said. “Zorro, you’re not.”
“Sad but true,” he said, and the door slammed behind her.