"Этаж смерти" with W_cat

[82] “The United States motto?” I said. “E Pluribus Unum? Adopted in 1776 by the Second Continental Congress, right?”

[83] He just grunted at me. I carried on looking straight at him. I figured this was the type of a guy who might answer a question.

[84] “What is this about?” I asked him.

[85] Silence again. His turn to look at me. I could see him thinking about whether to answer, and how.

[86] “What is this about?” I asked him again. He sat back and steepled his fingers.

[87] “You know what this is about,” he said. “Homicide. With some very disturbing features. Victim was found this morning up at the Kliner warehouse. North end of the county road, up at the highway cloverleaf. Witness has reported a man seen walking away from that location. Shortly after eight o’clock this morning. Description given was that of a white man, very tall, wearing a long black overcoat, fair hair, no hat, no baggage.”

[88] Silence again. I am a white man. I am very tall. My hair is fair. I was sitting there wearing a long black overcoat. I didn’t have a hat. Or a bag. I had been walking on the county road for the best part of four hours this morning. From eight until about eleven forty-five.

[89] “How long is the county road?” I said. “From the highway all the way down to here?”

[90] Finlay thought about it.

[91] “Maybe fourteen miles, I guess,” he said.

[92] “Right,” I said. “I walked all the way down from the highway into town. Fourteen miles, maybe. Plenty of people must have seen me. Doesn’t mean I did anything to anybody.”

[93] He didn’t respond. I was getting curious about this situation.

[94] “Is that your neighborhood?” I asked him. “All the way over at the highway?”

[95] “Yes, it is,” he said. “Jurisdiction issue is clear. No way out for you there, Mr. Reacher. The town limit extends fourteen miles, right up to the highway. The warehousing out there is mine, no doubt about that.”

[96] He waited. I nodded. He carried on.

[97] “Kliner built the place, five years ago,” he said. “You heard of him?”

[98] I shook my head.

[99] “How should I have heard of him?” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”

[100] “He’s a big deal around here,” Finlay said. “His operation out there pays us a lot of taxes, does us a lot of good. A lot of revenue and a lot of benefit for the town without a lot of mess, because it’s so far away, right? So we try to take care of it for him. But now it’s a homicide scene, and you’ve got explaining to do.”

[101] The guy was doing his job, but he was wasting my time.

[102] “OK, Finlay,” I said. “I’ll make a statement describing every little thing I did since I entered your lousy town limits until I got hauled in here in the middle of my damn breakfast. If you can make anything out of it, I’ll give you a damn medal. Because all I did was to place one foot in front of the other for nearly four hours in the pouring rain all the way through your precious fourteen damn miles.”

[103] That was the longest speech I had made for six months. Finlay sat and gazed at me. I watched him struggling with any detective’s basic dilemma. His gut told him I might not be his man. But I was sitting right there in front of him. So what should a detective do? I let him ponder. Tried to time it right with a nudge in the right direction. I was going to say something about the real guy still running around out there while he was wasting time in here with me. That would feed his insecurity. But he jumped first. In the wrong direction.

[104] “No statements,” he said. “I’ll ask the questions and you’ll answer them. You’re Jack-none-Reacher. No address. No ID. What are you, a vagrant?”

[105] I sighed. Today was Friday. The big clock showed it was already more than half over. This guy Finlay was going to go through all the hoops with this. I was going to spend the weekend in a cell. Probably get out Monday.

[106] “I’m not a vagrant, Finlay,” I said. “I’m a hobo. Big difference.”

[107] He shook his head, slowly.

[108] “Don’t get smart with me, Reacher,” he said. “You’re in deep shit. Bad things happened up there. Our witness saw you leaving the scene. You’re a stranger with no ID and no story. So don’t get smart with me.”

[109] He was still just doing his job, but he was still wasting my time.

[110] “I wasn’t leaving a homicide scene,” I said. “I was walking down a damn road. There’s a difference, right? People leaving homicide scenes run and hide. They don’t walk straight down the road. What’s wrong about walking down a road? People walk down roads all the damn time, don’t they?”

[111] Finlay leaned forward and shook his head.

[112] “No,” he said. “Nobody has walked the length of that road since the invention of the automobile. So why no address? Where are you from? Answer the questions. Let’s get this done.”

[113] “OK, Finlay, let’s get it done,” I said. “I don’t have an address because I don’t live anywhere. Maybe one day I’ll live somewhere and then I’ll have an address and I’ll send you a picture postcard and you can put it in your damn address book, since you seem so damn concerned about it.”

[114] Finlay gazed at me and reviewed his options. Elected to go the patient route. Patient, but stubborn. Like he couldn’t be deflected.

[115] “Where are you from?” he asked. “What was your last address?”

[116] “What exactly do you mean when you say where am I from?” I asked.

His lips were clamped. I was getting him bad-tempered, too. But he stayed patient. Laced the patience with an icy sarcasm.

[117] “OK,” he said. “You don’t understand my question, so let me try to make it quite clear. What I mean is, where were you born, or where have you lived for that majority period of your life which you instinctively regard as predominant in a social or cultural context?”

[118] I just looked at him.

[119] “I’ll give you an example,” he said. “I myself was born in Boston, was educated in Boston and subsequently worked for twenty years in Boston, so I would say, and I think you would agree, that I come from Boston.”

[120] I was right. A Harvard guy. A Harvard guy, running out of patience.

[121] “OK,” I said. “You’ve asked the questions. I’ll answer them. But let me tell you something. I’m not your guy. By Monday you’ll know I’m not your guy. So do yourself a favor. Don’t stop looking.”

[122] Finlay was fighting a smile. He nodded gravely.

[123] “I appreciate your advice,” he said. “And your concern for my career.”

[124] “You’re welcome,” I said.

[125] “Go on,” he said.

[126] “OK,” I said. “According to your fancy definition, I don’t come from anywhere. I come from a place called Military. I was born on a U.S. Army base in West Berlin. My old man was Marine Corps and my mother was a French civilian he met in Holland. They got married in Korea.”

[127] Finlay nodded. Made a note.

[128] “I was a military kid,” I said. “Show me a list of U.S. bases all around the world and that’s a list of where I lived. I did high school in two dozen different countries and I did four years up at West Point.”

[129] “Go on,” Finlay said.

[130] “I stayed in the army,” I said. “Military Police. I served and lived in all those bases all over again. Then, Finlay, after thirty-six years of first being an officer’s kid and then being an officer myself, suddenly there’s no need for a great big army anymore because the Soviets have gone belly-up. So hooray, we get the peace dividend. Which for you means your taxes get spent on something else, but for me means I’m a thirty-six-year-old unemployed ex-military policeman getting called a vagrant by smug civilian bastards who wouldn’t last five minutes in the world I survived.”

[131] He thought for a moment. Wasn’t impressed.

[132] “Continue,” he said.

[133] I shrugged at him.

[134] “So right now I’m just enjoying myself,” I said. “Maybe eventually I’ll find something to do, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll settle somewhere, maybe I won’t. But right now, I’m not looking to.”

[135] He nodded. Jotted some more notes.

[136] “When did you leave the army?” he asked.

[137] “Six months ago,” I said. “April.”

[138] “Have you worked at all since then?” he asked.

[139] “You’re joking,” I said. “When was the last time you looked for work?”

[140] “April,” he mimicked. “Six months ago. I got this job.”

[141] “Well, good for you, Finlay,” I said.

[142] I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Finlay gazed at me for a moment.

[143] “What have you been living on?” he asked. “What rank did you hold?”

[144] “Major,” I said. “They give you severance pay when they kick you out. Still got most of it. Trying to make it last, you know?”

[145] A long silence. Finlay drummed a rhythm with the wrong end of his pen.

[146] “SO LET’S TALK ABOUT THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS,” he said.

[147] I sighed. Now I was heading for trouble.

[148] “I came up on the Greyhound bus,” I said. “Got off at the county road. Eight o’clock this morning. Walked down into town, reached that diner, ordered breakfast and I was eating it when your guys came by and hauled me in.”

[149] “You got business here?” he asked.

I shook my head.

[150] “I’m out of work,” I said. “I haven’t got any business anywhere.”

[151] He wrote that down.

[152] “Where did you get on the bus?” he asked me.

[153] “In Tampa,” I said. “Left at midnight last night.”

[154] “Tampa in Florida?” he asked.

[155] I nodded. He rattled open another drawer. Pulled out a Greyhound schedule. Riffed it open and ran a long brown finger down a page. This was a very thorough guy. He looked across at me.

[156] “That’s an express bus,” he said. “Runs straight through north to Atlanta. Arrives there nine o’clock in the morning. Doesn’t stop here at eight.”

I shook my head.

[157] “I asked the driver to stop,” I said. “He said he shouldn’t, but he did. Stopped specially, let me off.”

[158] “You been around here before?” he asked.

[159] I shook my head again.

[160] “Got family down here?” he asked.

[161] “Not down here,” I said.

[162] “You got family anywhere?” he asked.

[163] “A brother up in D.C.,” I said. “Works for the Treasury Department.”

[164] “You got friends down here in Georgia?” he asked.

[165] “No,” I said.

[166] Finlay wrote it all down. Then there was a long silence. I knew for sure what the next question was going to be.

[167] “So why?” he asked. “Why get off the bus at an unscheduled stop and walk fourteen miles in the rain to a place you had absolutely no reason to go to?”

[168] That was the killer question. Finlay had picked it out right away. So would a prosecutor. And I had no real answer.

[169] “What can I tell you?” I said. “It was an arbitrary decision. I was restless. I have to be somewhere, right?”

[170] “But why here?” he said.

[171] “I don’t know,” I said. “Guy next to me had a map, and I picked this place out. I wanted to get off the main drags. Thought I could loop back down toward the Gulf, farther west, maybe.”

[172] “You picked this place out?” Finlay said. “Don’t give me that shit. How could you pick this place out? It’s just a name. It’s just a dot on the map. You must have had a reason.”

I nodded.

[173] “I thought I’d come and look for Blind Blake,” I said.

[174] “Who the hell is Blind Blake?” he said.

[175] I watched him evaluating scenarios like a chess computer evaluates moves. Was Blind Blake my friend, my enemy, my accomplice, conspirator, mentor, creditor, debtor, my next victim?

[176] “Blind Blake was a guitar player,” I said. “Died sixty years ago, maybe murdered. My brother bought a record, sleeve note said it happened in Margrave. He wrote me about it. Said he was through here a couple of times in the spring, some kind of business. I thought I’d come down and check the story out.”