Killing Floor

WE GOT IN THE CHEVY AND SHE SNAPPED ON THE DOME light. Pulled the photograph out of her pocket. Leaned over and tilted the picture so the light caught the shiny surface. Checked it carefully. Handed it to me.



"Look at the edge," she said. "On the left."



The picture was of Sherman Stoller standing in front of a yellow truck. Paul Hubble was turned away, in the background. The two figures and the truck filled the whole frame apart from a wedge of blacktop at the bottom. And a thin margin of background to the left. The background slice was even more out of focus than Hubble was, but I could see the edge of a modern metal building, with silver siding. A tall tree beyond. The frame of a door. It was a big industrial door, rolled up. The frame was a dark red color. Some kind of baked-on industrial coating. Partly decorative, partly preservative. Some kind of a shed door. There was gloom inside the shed.



"That's Kliner's warehouse," she said. "At the top of the county road."



"Are you sure?" I said.



"I recognize the tree," she said.



I looked again. It was a very distinctive tree. Dead on one side. Maybe split by lightning.



"That's Kliner's warehouse," she said again. "No doubt about that."



Then she clicked her car phone on and took the photograph back. Dialed DMV in Atlanta and called in the number from the front of Stoller's truck. Waited a long moment, tapping her index finger on the steering wheel. I heard the crackle of the response in the earpiece. Then she clicked the phone off and turned to me.



"The truck is registered to Kliner Industries," she said. "And the registered address is Zacarias Perez, Attorneys-at-Law, Jacksonville, Florida."



I nodded. She nodded back. Sherman Stoller's buddies. The ones who had got him out of Jacksonville Central in fifty-five minutes flat, two years ago.



"OK," she said. "Put it all together. Hubble, Stoller, Joe's investigation. They're printing counterfeit money down in Kliner's warehouse, right?"



I shook my head.



"Wrong," I said. "There's no printing going on inside the States. It all happens abroad. Molly Beth Gordon told me that, and she ought to know what she's talking about. She said Joe had made it impossible. And whatever Stoller was doing, Judy said he stopped doing it a year ago. And Finlay said Joe only started this whole thing a year ago. Around the same time Hubble fired Stoller."



Roscoe nodded. Shrugged.



"We need Molly's help," she said. "We need a copy of Joe's file."



"Or Picard's help," I said. "We might find Joe's hotel room and get hold of the original. It's a race to see who's going to call us first, Molly or Picard."



Roscoe clicked off the dome light. Started the car for the ride back to the airport hotel. I just sprawled out beside her, yawning. I could sense she was getting uptight. She had run out of things to do. Run out of distractions. Now she had to face the quiet vulnerable hours of the night. The first night after last night. The prospect was making her agitated.



"You got that gun, Reacher?" she asked.



I squirmed around in the seat to face her.



"It's in the trunk," I said. "In that box. You put it in there, remember?"



"Bring it inside, OK?" she said. "Makes me feel better."



I grinned sleepily in the dark. Yawned.



"Makes me feel better too," I said. "It's a hell of a gun."



Then we lapsed back into silence. Roscoe found the hotel lot. We got out of the car and stood stretching in the dark. I opened the trunk. Lifted the box out and slammed the lid. Went in through our lobby and up in the elevator.



In the room we just crashed out. Roscoe laid her shiny.38 on the carpet on her side of the bed. I reloaded my giant.44 and laid it on my side. Cocked and locked. We wedged a chair under the door handle. Roscoe felt safer that way.



I WOKE EARLY AND LAY IN BED, THINKING ABOUT JOE. Wednesday morning. He'd been dead five days. Roscoe was already up. She was standing in the middle of the floor, stretching. Some kind of a yoga thing. She'd taken a shower and she was only half dressed. She had no trousers on. Just a shirt. She had her back to me. As she stretched, the shirt was riding way up. Suddenly I wasn't thinking about Joe anymore.



"Roscoe?" I said.



"What?" she said.



"You've got the most wonderful ass on the planet," I said.



She giggled. I jumped on her. Couldn't help it. Couldn't do anything else. She drove me crazy. It was the giggle that did it to me. It made me crazy. I hauled her back into the big hotel bed. The building could have fallen down and we wouldn't have noticed it. We finished in an exhausted tangle. Lay there for a while. Then Roscoe got up again and showered for the second time that morning. Got dressed again. Trousers and everything. Grinned at me as if to say she was sparing me from any further temptation.



"So did you mean it?" she said.



"Mean what?" I said, with a smile.



"You know what." She smiled back. "When you told me I had a cute ass."



"I didn't say you had a cute ass," I said. "I've seen plenty of cute asses. I said yours was the most wonderful ass on the whole damn planet."



"But did you mean it?" she said.



"You bet I meant it," I said. "Don't underestimate the attraction of your ass, Roscoe, whatever you do."



I called room service for breakfast. Removed the chair from under the door handle ready for the little cart. Pulled the heavy drapes. It was a glorious morning. A bright blue sky, no clouds at all, brilliant fall sunshine. The room was flooded with light. We cracked the window and let in the air and the smells and the sounds of the day. The view was spectacular. Right over the airport and to the city beyond. The cars in the lots caught the sun and looked like jewels on beige velvet. The planes clawed their way into the air and wheeled slowly away like fat, important birds. The buildings downtown grew tall and straight in the sun. A glorious morning. But it was the sixth straight morning my brother wasn't alive to see.



ROSCOE USED THE PHONE TO CALL FINLAY DOWN IN MARGRAVE. She told him about the photograph of Hubble and Stoller standing in the sun on the warehouse forecourt. Then she gave him our room number and told him to call us if Molly got back to us from Washington. Or if Picard got back to us with information from the car rental people about the burned Pontiac. I figured we should stay in Atlanta in case Picard beat Molly and we got a hotel trace on Joe. Chances were he stayed in the city, maybe near the airport. No point in us driving all the way back down to Margrave and then having to drive all the way back up to Atlanta again. So we waited. I fiddled with the radio built into the nightstand thing. Came up with a station playing something halfway decent. Sounded like they were playing through an early Canned Heat album. Bouncy and sunny and just right for a bright empty morning.



Breakfast came and we ate it. The whole bit. Pancakes, syrup, bacon. Lots of coffee in a thick china jug. Afterward, I lay back on the bed. Pretty soon started feeling restless. Started feeling like it had been a mistake to wait around. It felt like we weren't doing anything. I could see Roscoe was feeling the same way. She propped the photograph of Hubble and Stoller and the yellow van on the nightstand and glared at it. I glared at the telephone. It wasn't ringing. We wandered around the room, waiting. Then I stooped to pick up the Desert Eagle off the floor by the bed. Hefted it in my hand. Traced the engraved name on the grip with my finger. Looked across at Roscoe. I was curious about the guy who'd bought that massive automatic.



"What was Gray like?" I asked.



"Gray?" she said. "He was so thorough. You want to get Joe's files? You should see Gray's paperwork. There are twenty-five years of his files in the station house. All meticulous, all comprehensive. Gray was a good detective."



"Why did he hang himself?" I asked her.



"I don't know," she said. "I never understood it."



"Was he depressed?" I said.



"Not really," she said. "I mean, he was always sort of depressed. Lugubrious, you know? A very dour sort of guy. And bored. He was a good detective, and he was wasted in Margrave. But no worse in February than any other time. It was a total surprise to me. I was very upset."



"Were you close?" I asked her.



She shrugged.



"Yes, we were," she said. "In a way, we were pretty close. He was a dour guy, you know, not really that close to anybody. Never married, always lived alone, no relatives. He was a teetotaler, so he would never come out for a beer or anything. He was quiet, messy, a little overweight. No hair and a big straggly beard. A very self-contained, comfortable type of a guy. A loner, really. But he was as close to me as he was ever going to get to anybody. We liked each other, in a quiet sort of a way."



"And he never said anything?" I asked her. "Just hanged himself one day?"



"That's how it was," she said. "A total shock. I'll never understand it."



"Why did you have his gun in your desk?" I said.



"He asked if he could keep it in there," she said. "He had no space in his own desk. He generated a lot of paper-work. He just asked if I could keep a box for him with the gun hidden in it. It was his private weapon. He said he couldn't get it approved by the department because the caliber was too big. He made it feel like some kind of a big secret."



I put the dead man's secret gun down on the carpet again and the silence was shattered by the phone ringing. I sprinted for the nightstand and answered it. Heard Finlay's voice. I gripped the phone and held my breath.



"Reacher?" Finlay said. "Picard got what we need. He traced the car."



I breathed out and nodded to Roscoe.



"Great, Finlay," I said. "So what's the story?"



"Go to his office," he said. "He'll give you the spread, face to face. I didn't want too much conversation on the phones down here."



I closed my eyes for a second and felt a surge of energy.



"Thanks, Finlay," I said. "Speak to you later."



"OK," he said. "Take care, right?"



Then he hung up and left me sitting there holding the phone, smiling.



"I thought he'd never call," Roscoe laughed. "But I guess eighteen hours isn't too bad, even for the Bureau, right?"



THE ATLANTA FBI WAS HOUSED IN A NEW FEDERAL BUILDING downtown. Roscoe parked at the curb outside. The Bureau reception called upstairs and told us Special Agent Picard would come right down to meet with us. We waited for him in the lobby. It was a big hall, with a brave stab at decoration, but it still had the glum atmosphere government buildings have. Picard came out of an elevator within three minutes. He loped over. He seemed to fill the whole hall. He nodded to me and took Roscoe's hand.



"Heard a lot about you from Finlay," he said to her.



His bear's voice rumbled. Roscoe nodded and smiled.



"The car Finlay found?" he said. "Rental Pontiac. Booked out to Joe Reacher, Atlanta airport, Thursday night at eight."



"Great, Picard," I said. "Any guess about where he was holed up?"



"Better than a guess, my friend," Picard said. "They had the exact location. It was a prebooked car. They delivered it right to his hotel."



He mentioned a place a mile the other way from the hotel we were using.



"Thanks, Picard," I said. "I owe you."



"No problem, my friend," he said. "You take care now, OK?"



He loped off back to the elevator and we raced back south to the airport. Roscoe swung onto the perimeter road and accelerated into the flow. Across the divider, a black pickup flashed by. Brand-new. I spun around and caught a glimpse of it disappearing behind a raft of trucks. Black. Brand-new. Probably nothing. They sell more pickups down here than anything else.



ROSCOE PULLED HER BADGE AT THE DESK WHERE PICARD said Joe had checked in on Thursday. The clerk did some keyboard work and told us he had been in 621, sixth floor, far end of the corridor. She said a manager would meet us up there. So we went up in the elevator and walked the length of a dark corridor. Stood waiting outside the door to Joe's room.



The manager came by more or less straight away and opened the room up with his passkey. We stepped in. The room was empty. It had been cleaned and tidied. It looked like it was ready for new occupants.



"What about his stuff?" I said. "Where is it all?"



"We cleared it out Saturday," the manager said. "The guy was booked in Thursday night, supposed to vacate by eleven Friday morning. What we do is we give them an extra day, then if they don't show, we clear them out, down to housekeeping."



"So his stuff is in a closet somewhere?" I asked.



"Downstairs," the manager said. "You should see the stuff we got down there. People leave things all the time."



"So can we go take a look?" I said.



"Basement," he said. "Use the stairs from the lobby. You'll find it."



The manager strolled off. Roscoe and I walked the length of the corridor again and rode back down in the elevator. We found the service staircase and went down to the basement. Housekeeping was a giant hall stacked with linens and towels. There were hampers and baskets full of soap and those free sachets you find in the showers. Maids were pulling in and out with the trolleys they use for servicing the rooms. There was a glassed-in office cubicle in the near corner with a woman at a small desk. We walked over and rapped on the glass. She looked up. Roscoe held out her badge.



"Help you?" the woman said.



"Room six-two-one," Roscoe said. "You cleared out some belongings, Saturday morning. You got them down here?"



I was holding my breath again.



"Six-two-one?" the woman said. "He came by for them already. They're gone."



I breathed out. We were too late. I went numb with disappointment.



"Who came by?" I asked. "When?"



"The guest," the woman said. "This morning, maybe nine, nine thirty."



"Who was he?" I asked her.



She pulled a small book off a shelf and thumbed it open. Licked a stubby finger and pointed to a line.



"Joe Reacher," she said. "He signed the book and took the stuff."



She reversed the book and slid it toward us. There was a scrawled signature on the line.



"What did this Reacher guy look like?" I asked her.



She shrugged.



"Foreign," she said. "Some kind of a Latino. Maybe from Cuba? Little dark guy, slender, nice smile. Very polite sort of a guy, as I recall."



"You got a list of the stuff?" I said.



She slid the stubby finger further along the line. There was a small column filled with tight handwriting. It listed a garment bag, eight articles of clothing, a toilet bag, four shoes. The last item listed was: one briefcase.



We just walked away from her and found the stairs back to the lobby. Walked out into the morning sun. It didn't feel like such a great day anymore.



We reached the car. Leaned side by side on the front fender. I was weighing up in my mind whether Joe would have been smart enough and careful enough to do what I would have done. I figured maybe he would have been. He'd spent a long time around smart and careful people.



"Roscoe?" I said. "If you were the guy walking out of here with Joe's stuff, what would you do?"



She stopped with the car door half open. Thought about it. "I'd keep the briefcase," she said. "Take it wherever I was supposed to take it. The rest of the stuff, I'd get rid of it."



"That's what I would do as well," I said. "Where would you get rid of it?"



"First place I saw, I guess," she said.



There was a service road running between the hotel and the next one in line. It looped behind the hotels and then out onto the perimeter road. There was a line of Dumpsters along a twenty-yard stretch of it. I pointed.



"Suppose he drove out that way?" I said. "Suppose he stopped and lobbed the garment bag straight into one of those Dumpsters?"



"But he'd have kept the briefcase, right?" Roscoe said.



"Maybe we aren't looking for the briefcase," I said. "Yesterday, I drove miles and miles out to that stand of trees, but I hid in the field. A diversion, right? It's a habit. Maybe Joe had the same habit. Maybe he carried a briefcase but kept his important stuff in the garment bag."



Roscoe shrugged. Wasn't convinced. We started walking down the service road. Up close, the Dumpsters were huge. I had to lever myself up on the edge of each one and peer in. The first one was empty. Nothing in it at all, except the baked-on kitchen dirt from years of use. The second one was full. I found a length of studding from some demolished drywall and poked around with it. Couldn't see anything. I heaved myself down and walked to the next one.



There was a garment bag in it. Lying right on top of some old cartons. I fished for it with the length of wood. Hauled it out. Tossed it onto the ground at Roscoe's feet. Jumped down next to it. It was a battered, well-traveled bag. Scuffed and scratched. Lots of airline tags all over it. There was a little nameplate in the shape of a miniature gold credit card fastened to the handle. It said: Reacher.



"OK, Joe," I said to myself. "Let's see if you were a smart guy."



I was looking for the shoes. They were in the outside pocket of the bag. Two pairs. Four shoes, just like it said on the housekeeper's list. I pulled the inner soles out of each one in turn. Under the third one, I found a tiny Ziploc bag. With a sheet of computer paper folded up inside it.



"Smart as a whip, Joe," I said to myself, and laughed.