Killing Floor

22

FINLAY NODDED. HE WAS CONVINCED. THEN HE SMILED. HE stood up from the bench in the barbershop window and took Roscoe’s hand. Shook it very formally.

“Good work,” he said to her. “A perfect analysis. I always said you were smart, Roscoe. Right, Reacher? Didn’t I tell you she’s the best we got?”

I nodded and smiled and Roscoe blushed. Finlay held on to her hand and kept on smiling. But I could see him combing backward and forward through her theory, looking for loose ends. He only found two.

“What about Hubble?” he asked. “Where did he fit in? They wouldn’t recruit a bank executive just to load trucks, would they?”

I shook my head.

“Hubble used to be a currency manager,” I said. “He was there to get rid of the fake money. He was feeding it into the system. He knew where it could be slipped in. Where it was needed. Like his old job, but in reverse.”

He nodded.

“What about the air conditioners?” he asked. “Sherman Stoller was hauling them to Florida. That woman told you. We know that’s for real because you saw two old cartons in her garage. And his truck was full of them when the Jacksonville PD searched it. What was that all about?”

“Legitimate business, I guess,” I said. “Like a decoy. It concealed the illegal part. Like camouflage. It explained the truck movements up and down to Florida. They would have had to run south empty otherwise.”

Finlay nodded.

“Smart move, I guess,” he said. “No empty run. Makes sense. Sell a few air conditioners, it makes money both ways, right?”

He nodded again and let go of Roscoe’s hand.

“We need samples of the money,” he said.

I smiled at him. I had suddenly realized something.

“I’ve got samples,” I said. I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my thick roll of hundreds. Pulled one off the back of the roll and one off the front. Gave the two banknotes to Finlay.

“These are their counterfeits?” he said.

“Got to be,” I said. “Charlie Hubble gave me a wad of hundreds for expense money. She probably got them from Hubble. Then I took another wad from those guys who were out looking for me Tuesday.”

“And that means they’re counterfeit?” Finlay said. “Why?”

“Think about it,” I said. “Kliner needs operating cash, why should he use real money? I bet he paid Hubble in counterfeit money. And I bet he gave those Jacksonville boys counterfeit money for their operating expenses, too.”

Finlay held the two hundreds right up to the bright light in the window. Roscoe and I crowded him for a look.

“Are you sure?” Roscoe said. “They look real to me.”

“They’re fakes,” I said. “Got to be. Stands to reason, right? Hundreds are what fakers like to print. Anything bigger is hard to pass, anything smaller isn’t worth the effort. And why should they spend real bucks when they’ve got truckloads of forgeries available?”

We took a good look at them. Peered at them, felt them, smelled them, rubbed them between our fingers. Finlay opened up his billfold and pulled out a hundred of his own. We compared the three notes. Passed them back and forth. Couldn’t see any difference at all.

“If these are fakes, they’re damn good,” Finlay said. “But what you said makes sense. Probably the whole of the Kliner Foundation is funded with fakes. Millions every year.”

He put his own hundred back in his billfold. Slid the fakes into his pocket.

“I’m going back to the station house,” he said. “You two come in tomorrow, about noon. Teale will be gone for lunch. We’ll take it from there.”

ROSCOE AND I DROVE FIFTY MILES SOUTH, TO MACON. I wanted to keep on the move. It’s a basic rule for safety. Keep moving around. We chose an anonymous motel on the southeastern fringe. As far from Margrave as you can get in Macon, with the city sprawl between us and our enemies. Old Mayor Teale had said a motel in Macon would suit me. Tonight, he was right.

We showered in cold water and fell into bed. Fell into a restless sleep. The room was warm. We tossed around fitfully most of the night. Gave it up and got up again with the dawn. Stood there yawning in the half light. Thursday morning. Felt like we hadn’t slept at all. We groped around and got dressed in the dark. Roscoe put her uniform on. I put my old things on. I figured I’d need to buy some new stuff soon. I’d do it with Kliner’s forgeries.

“What are we going to do?” Roscoe said.

I didn’t answer. I was thinking about something else.

“Reacher?” she said. “What are we going to do about all this?”

“What did Gray do about it?” I said.

“He hung himself,” she said.

I thought some more.

“Did he?” I asked her.

There was a silence.

“Oh God,” Roscoe said. “You think there’s some doubt about that?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Think about it. Suppose he confronted one of them? Suppose he was found poking around somewhere he shouldn’t have been?”

“You think they killed him?” she asked. There was panic in her voice.

“Maybe,” I said again. “I think they killed Joe and Stoller and the Morrisons and Hubble and Molly Beth Gordon. I think they tried to kill you and me. If somebody is a threat, they kill him. That’s how Kliner operates.”

Roscoe was quiet for a while. Thinking about her old colleague. Gray, the dour and patient detective. Twenty-five years of meticulous work. A guy like that was a threat. A guy who took thirty-two patient days to cross-check a suspicion was a threat. Roscoe looked up and nodded.

“He must have made a wrong move,” she said.

I nodded gently at her.

“They lynched him,” I said. “Made it look like suicide.”

“I can’t believe it,” she said.

“Was there an autopsy?” I asked her.

“Guess so,” she said.

“Then we’ll check it out,” I said. “We’ll have to speak to that doctor again. Down in Yellow Springs.”

“But he’d have said, right?” she asked me. “If he’d had doubts, wouldn’t he have raised them at the time?”

“He’d have raised them with Morrison,” I said. “Morrison would have ignored them. Because his people had caused them in the first place. We’ll have to check it out for ourselves.”

Roscoe shuddered.

“I was at his funeral,” she said. “We were all there. Chief Morrison made a speech on the lawn outside the church. So did Mayor Teale. They said he was a fine officer. They said he was Margrave’s finest. But they killed him.”

She said it with a lot of feeling. She’d liked Margrave. Her family had toiled there for generations. She was rooted. She’d liked her job. Enjoyed the sense of contribution. But the community she’d served was rotten. It was dirty and corrupted. It wasn’t a community. It was a swamp, wallowing in dirty money and blood. I sat and watched her world crumble.

WE DROVE NORTH ON THE ROAD BETWEEN MACON AND MARGRAVE. Halfway home Roscoe hung a right and we headed for Yellow Springs down a back road. Over toward the hospital. I was hungry. We hadn’t eaten breakfast. Not the best state for revisiting the morgue. We swung into the hospital lot. Took the speed bumps slowly and nosed around to the back. Parked up a little way from the big metal roller door.

We got out of the car. Stretched our legs on a roundabout route to the office door. The sun was warming the day up. It would have been pleasant to stay outside. But we ducked in and went looking for the doctor. We found him in his shabby office. He was at his chipped desk. Still looking tired. Still in a white coat. He looked up and nodded us in.

“Morning, folks,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

We sat down on the same stools as Tuesday. I stayed away from the fax machine. I let Roscoe do the talking. Better that way. I had no official standing.

“February this year,” she said. “My chief of detectives up at the Margrave PD killed himself. Do you remember?”

“Was that some guy called Gray?” the doctor said.

Roscoe nodded and the doctor got up and walked around to a file cabinet. Pulled open a drawer. It was tight and made a screeching sound. The doctor ran his fingers backward over the files.

“February,” he said. “Gray.”

He pulled a file and carried it back to his desk. Dropped it on his blotter. Sat back down heavily and opened it up. It was a thin file. Not much in it.

“Gray,” he said again. “Yes, I remember this guy. Hung himself, right? First time we had a Margrave case in thirty years. I was called up to his house. In the garage, wasn’t it? From a rafter?”

“That’s right,” Roscoe said. She went quiet.

“So how can I help you?” the doctor said.

“Anything wrong with it?” she asked.

The doctor looked at the file. Turned a page.

“Guy hangs himself, there’s always something wrong with it,” he said.

“Anything specially wrong with it?” I said.

The doctor swung his tired gaze over from Roscoe to me.

“Suspicious?” he said.

He was nearly smiling the same little smile he’d used on Tuesday.

“Was there anything suspicious about it?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Suicide by hanging. Open and shut. He was on a kitchen stool in his garage. Made himself a noose, jumped off the stool. Everything was consistent. We got the background story from the local people up there. I couldn’t see a problem.”

“What was the background story?” Roscoe asked him.

He swung his gaze back to her. Glanced through the file.

“He was depressed,” he said. “Had been for a while. The night it happened he was out drinking with his chief, who was the Morrison guy we just had in here, and the town mayor up there, some guy called Teale. The three of them were drowning their sorrows over some case Gray had screwed up on. He got falling down drunk and they had to help him home. They got him in to his house and left him there. He must have felt bad. He made it to the garage and hung himself.”

“That was the story?” Roscoe said.

“Morrison signed a statement,” the doctor said. “He was real upset. Felt he should have done more, you know, stayed with him or something.”

“Did it sound right to you?” she asked him.

“I didn’t know Gray at all,” he said. “This facility deals with a dozen police departments. I’d never seen anybody from Margrave before then. Quiet sort of a place, right? At least, it used to be. But what happened with this guy is consistent with what usually happens. Drinking sets people off.”

“Any physical evidence?” I asked him.

The doctor looked back in the file. Looked over at me.

“Corpse stank of whiskey,” he said. “Some fresh bruising on the upper and lower arms. Consistent with him being walked home by two men while inebriated. I couldn’t see a problem.”

“Did you do a postmortem?” Roscoe asked him.

The doctor shook his head.

“No need,” he said. “It was open and shut, we were very busy. Like I say, we have more to worry about down here than suicides over in Margrave. February, we had cases all over the place. Up to our eyes. Your Chief Morrison asked for minimum fuss. I think he sent us a note. Said it was kind of sensitive. Didn’t want Gray’s family to know that the old guy had been blind drunk. Wanted to preserve some kind of dignity. It was OK with me. I couldn’t see a problem and we were very busy, so I released the body for cremation right away.”

Roscoe and I sat looking at each other. The doctor stepped back to the cabinet and put the file away. Closed the drawer with a screech.

“OK, folks?” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got things to do.”

We nodded and thanked him for his time. Then we shuffled out of the cramped office. Got back out into the warm fall sunshine. Stood around blinking. We didn’t speak. Roscoe was too upset. She’d just heard about her old friend getting murdered.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“A bullshit story from beginning to end,” she said. “He hadn’t just screwed up on a case. He never screwed up on any case. He wasn’t especially depressed. And he didn’t drink. Never touched a drop. So he certainly wasn’t falling down drunk. And he would never socialize with Morrison. Or the damn mayor. He just wouldn’t. He didn’t like them. Never in a million years would he spend a social evening with them. And he had no family. So all that stuff about his family and sensitivity and dignity is total bullshit. They killed him and bullshitted the coroner so he wouldn’t look too closely.”

I sat there in the car and let the rage pour out of her. Then she was quiet and still. She was figuring out how they’d done it.

“Do you think it was Morrison and Teale?” she asked me.

“And somebody else,” I said. “There were three guys involved. I figure the three of them went around to his place and knocked on the door. Gray opened up and Teale pulled a gun. Morrison and the third guy grabbed him and held him by the arms. That explains the bruising. Teale maybe poured a bottle of whiskey down his throat, or at least splashed it all over his clothes. They hustled him off to the garage and strung him up.”

Roscoe started the car and eased it out of the hospital lot. She drove slowly over the speed bumps. Then she swung the wheel and blasted up the road through the countryside toward Margrave.

“They killed him,” she said. Just a simple statement. “Like they killed Joe. I think I know how you must be feeling.”

I nodded.

“They’ll pay for it,” I said. “For both of them.”

“You bet your ass,” she said.

We fell silent. Sped north for a while, then merged with the county road. A straight twelve miles up to Margrave.

“Poor old Gray,” she said. “I can’t believe it. He was so smart, so cautious.”

“Not smart enough,” I said. “Or cautious enough. We’ve got to remember that. You know the rules, right? Don’t be on your own. If you see somebody coming, run like hell. Or shoot the bastard. Stick with Finlay if you can, OK?”

She was concentrating on driving. She was doing a hell of a speed up the straight road. Thinking about Finlay.

“Finlay,” she repeated. “You know what I can’t figure?”

“What?” I said.

“There’s the two of them, right?” she said. “Teale and Morrison. They run the town for Kliner. They run the police department. Between them, they run everything. Their chief of detectives is Gray. An old guy, a wise head, smart and stubborn. He’s been there for twenty-five years, since well before any of this shit started up. They inherited him and they can’t get rid of him. So sure enough, one day their smart and stubborn detective sniffs them out. He’s found out that something is going on. And they find out that he’s found out. So they put him out of the way. They murder him to keep it all safe. Then what do they do next?”

“Go on,” I said.

“They hire in a replacement,” she said. “Finlay, down from Boston. A guy who is even smarter and even more stubborn than Gray was. Why the hell would they do that? If Gray was a danger to them, then Finlay would be twice as dangerous. So why did they do that? Why did they hire somebody even smarter than the last guy?”

“That’s easy,” I said. “They thought Finlay was really dumb.”

“Dumb?” she said. “How the hell could they think that?”

So I told her the story Finlay had told me on Monday over donuts at the convenience store counter. About his divorce. About his mental state at the time. What had he said? He was a basket case. An idiot. Couldn’t string two words together.

“Chief Morrison and Mayor Teale interviewed him,” I told her. “He thought it was the worst job application in history. He thought he had come across as an idiot. He was totally amazed they gave him the job. Now I understand why they did. They really were looking for an idiot.”

Roscoe laughed. That made me feel better.

“God,” she said. “That’s ironic. They must have sat down and planned it out. Gray was a problem, they said. Better replace him with a fool, they said. Better pick the worst candidate who applies, they said.”

“Right,” I said. “And they did. They picked a shell-shocked idiot from Boston. But by the time he turns up to start work, he’s calmed down and turned back into the cool and intelligent guy he always was.”

She smiled about that for two miles. Then we crested a slight rise and began the long sweep down into Margrave. We were tensed up. It was like entering the battle zone. We’d been out of it for a while. Sweeping back into it didn’t feel good. I had expected to feel better when I had identified the opposing players. But it wasn’t what I had expected. It wasn’t me against them, played out against a neutral background. The background wasn’t neutral. The background was the opposition. The whole town was in it. The whole place was bought and paid for. Nobody would be neutral. We were barreling down the rise at seventy miles an hour toward a dangerous mess. More dangerous than I had expected.

Roscoe slowed up at the town limit. The big Chevy glided onto Margrave’s glassy blacktop. The magnolia and dogwood scrub to the left and right was replaced by velvet lawns and ornamental cherries. Those trees with smooth shiny trunks. Like the bark was buffed by hand. In Margrave, it probably was. The Kliner Foundation was probably paying somebody a handsome salary to do it.

We passed the neat blocks of stores, all of them empty and complacent, floating on an unearned thousand a week. We jinked around the village green with the statue of Caspar Teale. Wafted past the turn down to Roscoe’s house with its smashed front door. Past the convenience store. Past the benches under the smart awnings. Past the parkland where the bars and rooming houses had been, back when Margrave was honest. Then up to the station house. We pulled off into the lot and parked up. Charlie Hubble’s Bentley was still there where I’d left it.

Roscoe killed the motor and we sat for a minute. Didn’t want to get out. We squeezed hands, her right, my left. A brief good luck gesture. We got out of the car. Into battle.

THE STATION HOUSE WAS COOL AND DESERTED EXCEPT FOR Baker at his desk and Finlay on his way out of the rosewood office in back. He saw us and hurried over.

“Teale’s back in ten minutes,” he said. “And we got a slight problem.”

He hustled us back to the office. We went in and he shut the door.

“Picard called,” he said.

“So what’s the problem?” I said.

“It’s the safe house,” he said. “Where Charlie and the kids are hiding out? That situation has to stay unofficial, right?”

“He told me that,” I said. “He’s out on a limb up there.”

“Exactly,” he said. “That’s the problem. He can’t staff it. He needs somebody to be up there with Charlie. He’s been doing duty himself. But he can’t do any more. Can’t take any more time out. And he feels it’s not appropriate, you know, Charlie being a woman, and the little girl and all. Kid’s terrified of him.”

He looked over at Roscoe. She saw where the conversation was going.

“He wants me up there?” she asked.

“Just for twenty-four hours,” Finlay said. “That’s what he’s asking for. Will you do it for him?”

Roscoe shrugged. Smiled.

“Of course I will,” she said. “No problem. I can spare a day. As long as you promise to get me back when the fun starts, OK?”

“That’s automatic,” Finlay said. “Fun can’t start until we’ve got the detail, and as soon as we’ve got the detail, Picard goes official and he puts his own agents into the safe house. You come back here.”

“OK,” Roscoe said. “When do I go?”

“Right now,” Finlay said. “He’ll be here any minute.”

She grinned at him.

“So you already figured I’d agree to it?” she said.

He grinned back at her.

“Like I told Reacher,” he said. “You’re the best we got.”

She and I went back through the squad room and out through the glass doors. Roscoe took her valise out of the Chevy and set it on the curb.

“See you tomorrow, I guess,” she said.

“You going to be OK?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said. “I’m going to be fine. Can’t get much safer than an FBI safe house, right? But I’m going to miss you, Reacher. I didn’t figure to spend time apart just yet.”

I squeezed her hand. She kissed me on the cheek. Just stretched up for a quick peck. Finlay pushed the station house door open. I heard the suck of the rubber seal. He stuck his head out and called over to Roscoe.

“You better give Picard an update, OK?” he said.

Roscoe nodded to him. Then we stood waiting in the sun. Didn’t have to wait long. Picard’s blue sedan squealed into the lot within a couple of minutes. Bounced to a stop right next to us. The big guy folded himself out of the seat and stood up. Just about blotted out the sun.

“I appreciate this, Roscoe,” he said to her. “You’re really helping me out.”

“No problem,” she said. “You’re helping us out, right? Where is this place I’m going?”

Picard grinned a harassed grin. Nodded toward me.

“I can’t say where it is,” he told her. “Not in front of civilians, right? I’m way out of line already. And I’m going to have to ask you not to tell him afterward, OK? And Reacher, don’t you press her about it, or Charlie, OK?”

“OK,” I said. I wouldn’t press her about it. She’d tell me anyway.

“Good,” Picard said.

He nodded a busy good-bye and picked up Roscoe’s bag. Threw it onto his rear seat. Then the two of them got into the blue sedan and drove off. Nosed out of the lot and headed north. I waved after them. Then the car was lost to sight.