One Shot

The Metropole interviews were finished by nine-twenty and they gave Emerson absolutely nothing at all. The night porter swore blind that he knew nothing about the girl. There were only eleven guests and none of them was promising. Emerson was an experienced and talented detective and he knew that people sometimes tell the truth. And he knew that accepting the truth was as important a part of a detective’s professional arsenal as rejecting lies. So he conferred with Donna Bianca and together they concluded they had just wasted the best part of three hours on a faulty hunch.

Then a guy named Gary called, from the auto parts store.

Gary had gotten to work at eight and had found himself really short-staffed. There was still no sign of Jeb Oliver and Sandy hadn’t shown, either. At first he had been annoyed. He had called her apartment and gotten no reply. On her way, he had assumed. Late. But she never showed. Thereafter he called every thirty minutes. By nine-thirty the annoyance had given way to worry and he started thinking about auto wrecks. So he called the cops for information. The desk guy told him there had been no traffic accidents that morning. Then there was a pregnant pause and the desk guy seemed to consider another possibility and asked for a name and a description. Gary said Alexandra Dupree, known as Sandy, nineteen years old, white, petite, green and red. Ten seconds after that Gary was speaking to a detective called Emerson on a cell phone.

Gary agreed to close the store for the day and Emerson sent a patrol car to pick him up. First stop was the morgue. Gary identified the body and was white and badly shaken when he arrived in Emerson’s office. Donna Bianca calmed him down and Emerson watched him carefully. Statistics show that women get killed by husbands, boyfriends, brothers, employers, and workmates-in descending order of likelihood-well before passing strangers show up on the list of possible suspects. And sometimes a boyfriend and a workmate can be the same guy. But Emerson knew that Gary was in the clear. He was too shaken. No way could a person fake that kind of sudden shock and surprise over something he had already known about for eight or ten hours.

So Emerson started in, gently, with all the usual cop questions. Last time you saw her? Know anything about her private life? Family? Boyfriends? Ex-boyfriends? Weird phone calls? Did she have any enemies? Problems? Money troubles?

And then, inevitably: Anything unusual over the last couple of days?

And so by ten-fifteen Emerson knew all about the stranger that had come to the store the day before. Very tall, heavily built, tan, aggressive, demanding, wearing olive-green pants and an olive-green flannel shirt. He had spent two mysterious sessions with Sandy in the back office, and had borrowed her car, and had demanded Jeb Oliver’s address with menace, and Jeb Oliver was missing, too.

Emerson left Gary with Donna Bianca and went out to the corridor and used his cell to call Alex Rodin in his office.

"Your lucky day," he said. "We’ve got a nineteen-year-old female homicide victim. Someone broke her neck."

"How does that make me lucky?"

"Her last unexplained contact was yesterday, at her place of work, with a guy that sounds a whole lot like our pal Jack Reacher."

"Really?"

"We got a pretty good description from her boss. And her neck was busted by a single blow to the side of the head, which ain’t easy unless you’re built like Reacher is."

"Who was the girl?"

"A redhead from the auto parts store out toward the highway. There’s also a boy missing from the same store."

"Where did this thing happen?"

"Outside the Metropole Palace Hotel."

"Is that where Reacher is staying?"

"Not according to the register."

"So is he a suspect or not?"

"Right now he looks pretty damn good for it."

"So when are you going to bring him in?"

"As soon as I find him."

"I’ll call Helen," Alex Rodin said. "She’ll know where he is."

Rodin lied to his daughter. He told her that Bellantonio needed to see Reacher to correct a possible misunderstanding about part of the prosecution’s evidence.

"What part?" Helen asked.

"Just something they discussed. Probably nothing important, but I’m playing this very cautiously. Don’t want to hand you grounds for an appeal."

The traffic cone, Helen thought.

"He’s on his way to the airport," she said.

"Why?"

"To say hello to Eileen Hutton."

"They know each other?"

"Apparently."

"That’s unethical."

"To know each other?"

"To influence her testimony."

"I’m sure he won’t do that."

"When will he be back?"

"After lunch, I think."

"OK," Rodin said. "It’ll keep."

But it didn’t keep, of course. Emerson left for the airport immediately. He had met Reacher twice face-to-face and could pick him out of a crowd. Donna Bianca went with him. They went in together through a restricted area and found a security office that looked out over the whole arrivals hall through one-way glass. They scanned the waiting faces carefully. No sign of Reacher. Not here yet. So they settled down to wait.

Chapter 9

Reacher didn’t go to the airport. He knew better. Senior military personnel spend a lot of time flying small aircraft, either fixed wing or rotary, and they don’t like it. Outside of combat, more military personnel die in plane crashes than from any other single cause. Therefore, given a choice, a smart Brigadier General like Eileen Hutton wouldn’t ride a puddle jumper down from Indianapolis. She would be happy enough with a big jet out of Washington National, but she wouldn’t contemplate a twin-prop for the final leg of her journey. No way. She would rent a car instead.

So Reacher walked south and east to the library. Asked the subdued woman at the desk where the Yellow Pages were stored. He went where she pointed and hauled the book out onto a table. Opened it to H for Hotels. Started looking. Almost certainly some JAG Corps office grunt had done the equivalent thing the previous day, but remotely, probably online. Hutton would have told him to book her a room. He would have been anxious to please, so he would have turned first to the street map and found the courthouse and the road in from the north. Then he would have chosen a decent place convenient for both. Somewhere with parking, for the rental car. Probably a chain, with an established government rate accessible by a code number.

The Marriott Suites, Reacher thought. That’s where she’ll be headed. Off the highway, south toward town, an obvious left turn east, and there it was, three blocks north of the courthouse, an easy walk, breakfast included. The office grunt had probably printed out driving directions from the internet and clipped them to her itinerary. Anxious to please. Hutton had that effect on people.

He memorized the Marriott’s number and put the book away. Then he walked out to the lobby and dialed the pay phone.

"I want to confirm a reservation," he said.

"Name?"

"Hutton."

"Yes, we’ve got that. Tonight only, a suite."

"Thank you," Reacher said, and put the phone down.

She would take an early flight out of D.C. After two decades in uniform she would be up at five, in a cab at six, boarding at seven. She would be in Indianapolis by nine, latest. Out of the Hertz lot by nine-thirty. It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive. She would arrive at noon. In about an hour.

He stepped out of the lobby and looped through the plaza and headed north and east through a thin crowd of people, past the far side of the recruiting office, past the back of the courthouse. He found the Marriott easily enough and took a corner table in its coffee shop and settled down to wait.