Make Me

Chapter 25

The LA Times was in a fine old art-deco building on West 1st and Spring in downtown Los Angeles. It had security worthy of a government agency. There was an X-ray belt, and a metal detector. Reacher wasn’t sure why. Maybe an inflated sense of importance. He doubted if the Times was top of anyone’s target list. Probably not even on the fourth or fifth page. But there was no choice. He dumped his coins in a bowl and stepped through the hoop. Chang was slower. She still had her suitcase, and her coat.

But eventually they were through, and they got passes from a desk, and rode up in an elevator. Westwood’s office turned out to be a square cream room with shelves of books and stacks of newspapers. There was a handsome old desk under the window, with a two-screen computer on it. Westwood was in a chair in front of it, reading e-mail. His enormous canvas bag was dumped on the floor, bellied open, full of more books and more newspapers and a metal laptop computer. Outside the door the hall was loud with the hum of busy people doing busy things. Outside the window the sky was bright with Southern California’s perpetual sunshine.

Westwood said, “I’ll be right with you. Take a seat.”

Something in his voice.

Taking a seat required a little effort. Reacher and Chang cleared stacks of magazines and papers off two spare chairs. Westwood closed his e-mail program and turned around. He said, “My legal department isn’t happy. There are confidentiality issues at stake. Our database is private.”

Chang asked, “What kind of downside do they foresee?”

“Unspecified. They’re lawyers. Everything is downside.”

“It’s an important investigation.”

“They say important investigations come with warrants and subpoenas. Or at least missing persons reports.”

Reacher said, “Why did you talk to your lawyers?”

Westwood said, “Because I’m required to.”

“Did you talk to your managing editor?”

“He doesn’t see a story. We ran background on Keever. He’s on a bender somewhere. He’s a washed-up old gumshoe.”

Chang said nothing.

Reacher said, “I never met the guy. But I met plenty like him. Above average in every way, except loose with impulse control. But those impulses came from the best of intentions. And however washed up he was, he was James Bond compared to the population of Mother’s Rest. But still they got him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“But suppose they did. Suppose there’s something weird out there, with two hundred dead people. That’s a story, right? That’s something the LA Times would eat up with a spoon. You could run it for weeks. You could get a Pulitzer. You could get on TV. You could get a movie deal.”

“Get back to me as soon as you’ve got something solid.”

“What do you think the chances are, of that happening?”

“A hundred to one.”

“Not two hundred?”

“Your theories aren’t evidence.”

“Here’s another theory. We walk out of here, leaving behind the hundred-to-one possibility there’s a big story out there, but because we’re gone it’s no longer a Times exclusive anymore, which means if the hundred-to-one pays off and it breaks, there’s going to be a crazy scramble, with all the papers competing for pole position. So if you’re a smart science editor, even though it’s only a hundred to one, you can see a tiny advantage in using what you know so far to get somewhat prepared ahead of time. So my guess is as soon as we’re back in the elevator, you’re going to check the database for calls from a guy named Maloney. Just to put your mind at rest.”

Westwood said nothing.

Reacher said, “So what difference would it make if we were still in the room?”

No response for a long moment. Then Westwood turned his chair to face his screens, and he clicked the mouse and typed a few letters in two different boxes. User ID and password, Reacher figured. The database, hopefully. Chang leaned forward. The screen showed a search page. Some kind of proprietary software, no doubt suitable for the job at hand, but ugly. Westwood clicked on a bunch of options. Isolating his own notes, possibly. To avoid irrelevant results. Maybe there were a hundred newsworthy Maloneys in LA. Maybe there were two hundred. Sports stars, businesspeople, actors, musicians, civic dignitaries.

Westwood said, “All theories should be tested. That’s a central part of the scientific method.”

He typed Maloney.

He clicked the mouse.

He got three hits.

The database showed contact made by a caller named Maloney on three separate occasions. The most recent was just shy of a month previously, and the second was three weeks before that, and the oldest was two weeks before the second. A five-week envelope, all told, four weeks ago. The incoming phone number was the same on all three occasions. It had a 501 area code, which no one recognized.

Westwood had made no notes about the subject or the content of any of the three conversations. Instead he had simply routed name, number, day, and time straight to a folder marked C.

“Which is?” Reacher asked.

“Conspiracies,” Westwood said.

“What kind of thing?”

“It’s a fairly wide category.”

“Give me an example.”

“Smoke alarms are compulsory in homes because they contain cameras and microphones wirelessly linked to the government. With poison gas capsules too, in case the government doesn’t like what you’re saying or doing.”

“Keever wouldn’t waste time on a thing like that.”

“And I wouldn’t ignore something more serious.”

“Maybe it wasn’t well explained.”

“I guess it can’t have been.”

“You sure you don’t remember this Maloney guy at all?”

As a response Westwood clicked his way through to an unfiltered list of all the calls he had received. The screens were big and he had two of them, but even so there was space only for a small part of the calendar year.

Reacher said, “Are we in there?”

Westwood nodded. “From this morning.”

“What folder did you put us in?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Chang took out her phone and dialed Maloney’s number. The 501 area code, and seven more digits. She put her phone on speaker. There was hiss and dead air as the cellular system hooked her up. Then the number rang.

And rang, and rang.

No answer, and no voice mail.

Chang hung up, after a whole long minute, and the office went quiet.

Reacher said, “We need to know where the 501 area code is.”

Westwood clicked off his database and opened up a web browser. Then he glanced at the door and said, “So I guess we’re really doing this.”

“No one will know,” Reacher said. “Until the movie comes out.”

The computer told them 501 was one of three area codes given to cell phones in Arkansas. Chang said, “Was there an Arkansas number you blocked about nine weeks ago? Maybe our guy switched from his land line to his cell, simple as that.”

Westwood went back into his database, to the unfiltered list of calls, and he scrolled back nine weeks, and said, “How much limbo should we give him? How fast would he have come up with the idea of changing his name and number?”

“Pretty fast,” Reacher said. “It isn’t brain surgery. But I’m guessing there was some limbo. Most likely because of hurt feelings. You rejected him. It might have taken him a week to swallow his pride and call you back.”

Westwood scrolled some more. Ten weeks back. He opened the list of area codes on his second screen, and went back and forth, comparing, line by line, and when he was finished he said, “I blocked four guys that week. But none of them was from Arkansas.”

Reacher said, “Try the week before. Maybe he’s more sensitive than we thought.”

Westwood scrolled again, backward through the next seven days, and then forward again, checking against the list of area codes, and he said, “I blocked two guys the previous week, for a fourteen-day total of six, but still no one from Arkansas.”

Reacher said, “We’re getting somewhere anyway. The Maloney calls started nine weeks ago, from a guy who had just gotten blocked, in a recent window of time, and in that category there are six possible candidates. Logic says our guy is one of them. And we could be talking to him thirty seconds from now. On his other line. Because you have all the original phone numbers.”