Gone Tomorrow

I turned the other way.

‘Jake?’ I said. ‘What about you?’

‘They came for me first. I’ve been here since noon. Watching you sleep.’

‘Any word from Peter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You snore, you know that?’

‘I was full of gorilla tranquillizer. From a dart gun.’

‘You’re kidding.’

I showed him the bloodstain on my pants, and then the one on my shoulder.

‘That’s insane,’ he said.

‘Were you at work?’

He nodded. ‘The dispatcher called my car back to base, and they were waiting for me.’

‘Your department knows where you are?’

‘Not specifically,’ he said. ‘But they know who took me away.’

‘That’s something,’ I said.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘The department won’t do anything for me. Guys like these come for you, suddenly you’re tainted, presumed guilty of something. People were already inching away from me.’

Lee said, ‘Like when Internal Affairs comes calling.’

I asked her, ‘Why isn’t Docherty here?’

‘He knows less than me. In fact he went out of his way to know less than me. Didn’t you notice that? He’s an old hand.’

‘He’s your partner.’

‘Today he is. By next week he’ll have forgotten he ever had a partner. You know how these things work.’

Jake said, ‘There are only three cells here. Maybe Docherty is where else.’

I asked, ‘Have these guys talked to you yet?’

Both of them shook their heads.

I asked, ‘Are you worried?’

Both of them nodded. Lee asked, ‘Are you?’

‘I’m sleeping well,’ I said. ‘But I think that’s mostly because of the tranquillizers.’

At six thirty they brought us food. Deli sandwiches, in plastic clamshell packs that were turned sideways and pushed through the bars. Plus bottles of water. I drank my water first and refilled the bottle from the tap. My sandwich was salami and cheese.

Finest meal I ever ate

At seven o’clock they took Jacob Mark away for questioning. No restraints. No chains. Theresa Lee and I sat on our cots, about eight feet apart, separated by bars. We didn’t talk much. Lee seemed depressed. At one point she said, ‘I lost some good friends when the towers came down. Not just cops. Firefighters, people that I had worked with. People that I had known for years.’ She said it as if she thought those truths should insulate her from the craziness that came afterwards. I didn’t answer her, Mostly I sat quiet and re-ran conversations in my head. All kinds of people had been talking at me. For hours. John Sansom, Lila Hoth, the guys in the next room. I was running through what they had all said, the same way a cabinet maker runs his palm over a length of planed wood, looking for the rough spots. There were a few. There were strange half-comments, odd nuances, little off-key implications. I didn’t know what any of them meant. Not then. But knowing that they were there was useful in itself.

At seven thirty they brought Jacob Mark back and took Theresa Lee away in his place. No restraints. No chains. Jake got on his cot and sat cross-legged with his back to the camera. I looked at him. An inquiry. He gave a millimetric shrug and rolled his eyes. Then he kept his hands in his lap, out of sight of the camera, and made a gun with his right thumb and forefinger. He tapped his thigh and looked at mine. I nodded. The dart gun. He put two fingers down between his knees and held a third in front and to the left. I nodded again. Two guys behind the table, and the third to the left with the gun. Probably in the doorway to the third room. On guard. Hence no restraints and no chains. I massaged my temples and while my hands were still up I mouthed, ‘When are our shoes?’ Jake mouthed back, ‘I don’t know.’

After that we sat in silence. I didn’t know what Jake was thinking about. His sister, probably. Or Peter. I was considering a binary choice. There are two ways to fight something. From the inside, or from the outside. I was an outside type of guy. Always had been.

At eight o’clock they brought Theresa Lee back and took me away again.

FORTY-FIVE

NO RESTRAINTS. NO CHAINS. CLEARLY THEY THOUGHT I was afraid of the dart gun. Which I was, to a degree. Not because I fear small puncture wounds. And not because I have anything against sleep, in and of itself. I like sleep as much as the next guy. But I didn’t want to waste any more time. I felt like I couldn’t afford another eight hours on my back.

The room was populated exactly as Jacob Mark had semaphored it. The main guy was already sitting in the centre chair. The guy who had fitted the chains that morning was the one who had brought me in, and he left me in the middle of the room and went to take his place at the table on the main guy’s right. The guy who had wielded the Franchi was standing off to the left with the dart gun in his hands. My possessions were still on the table. Or, they were back on the table. I doubted that they had been there while Jake or Lee had been in the room. No point. No reason. No relevance. They had been laid out all over again, especially for me. Cash, passport, bank card, toothbrush, Metrocard, Lee’s business card, the phony business card, the memory stick, and the cell phone. Nine items. All present and correct. Which was good, because I needed to take at least seven of them with me.

The guy in the centre chair said, ‘Sit down, Mr Reacher.’

I moved towards my chair and I felt all three of them relax. They had been working all night and all day. Now they were into their third straight hour of interrogation. And interrogation is heavy work. It demands close attention and mental flexibility. It wears you out. So the three guys were tired. Tired enough to have lost their edge. As soon as I headed for my chair, they moved out of the present and into the future. They thought their troubles were over. They started thinking about their approach. Their first question. They assumed I would get to my chair and sit down and be ready to hear it. Be ready to answer it.

They were wrong.

Half a step short of my destination I raised my foot to the edge of the table and straightened my leg and shoved. Shoved, not kicked, because I had no shoes on. The table jerked back and the far edge hit the two seated guys in the stomach and pinned them against their chair backs. By that point I was already moving to my left. I came up from a crouch at the third guy and tore the dart gun up and out of his hands and while he was all straight and exposed I kneed him hard in the groin. He gave up on the gun and folded forward and I high-stepped and changed feet and kneed him in the face. Like a folk dance from Ireland. I spun away and levelled the gun and pulled the trigger and shot the main guy in the chest. Then I went over the table and battered the other guy in the head with the dart gun’s butt, once, twice three times, hard and vicious, until he went quiet and stopped moving.

Four noisy violent seconds, from beginning to end. Four discrete units of action and time, separately packaged, separately unleashed. The table, the dart gun, the main guy, the second guy. One, two, three, four. Smooth and easy. The two guys I had hit were unconscious and bleeding. The guy on the floor from a shattered nose, and the guy at the table from a gash to his scalp. Next to him the main guy was on his way under, chemically assisted, the same way I had been twice before. It was interesting to watch. There was some kind of muscle paralysis involved. The guy was sliding down in his chair, helpless, but his eyes were moving like he was still aware of things. I remembered the whirling shapes, and I wondered if he was seeing them too.

Then I turned and watched the door to the third room. There was still the medical technician unaccounted for. Maybe others. Maybe lots of others. But the door stayed closed. The third room stayed quiet. I knelt and checked under the third guy’s jacket.

No Glock. He had a shoulder holster but it was empty. Standard procedure, probably. No firearms in any closed room with a prisoner present. I checked the other two guys. Same result. Government-issue nylon shoulder rigs, both of them empty.