Ли Чайлд - "Этаж смерти" with W_cat

[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.”

[177] Finlay looked blank. It must have sounded pretty thin to him. It would have sounded pretty thin to me too, in his position.

[178] “You came here looking for a guitar player?” he said.

“A guitar player who died sixty years ago? Why? Are you a guitar player?”

“No,” I said.

[179] “How did your brother write you?” he asked. “When you got no address?”

[180] “He wrote my old unit,” I said. “They forward my mail to my bank, where I put my severance pay. They send it on when I wire them for cash.”

[181] He shook his head. Made a note.

[182] “The midnight Greyhound out of Tampa, right?” he said.

I nodded.

[183] “Got your bus ticket?” he asked.

[184] “In the property bag, I guess,” I said. I remembered Baker bagging up all my pocket junk. Stevenson tagging it.

[185] “Would the bus driver remember?” Finlay said.

[186] “Maybe,” I said. “It was a special stop. I had to ask him.”

[187] I became like a spectator. The situation became abstract. My job had been not that different from Finlay’s. I had an odd feeling of conferring with him about somebody else’s case. Like we were colleagues discussing a knotty problem.

[188] “Why aren’t you working?” Finlay asked.

I shrugged. Tried to explain.

[189] “Because I don’t want to work,” I said. “I worked thirteen years, got me nowhere. I feel like I tried it their way, and to hell with them. Now I’m going to try it my way.”

[190] Finlay sat and gazed at me.

[191] “Did you have any trouble in the army?” he said.

[192] “No more than you did in Boston,” I said.

[193] He was surprised.

[194] “What do you mean by that?” he said.

[195] “You did twenty years in Boston,” I said. “That’s what you told me, Finlay. So why are you down here in this no-account little place? You should be taking your pension, going out fishing. Cape Cod or wherever. What’s your story?”

[196] “That’s my business, Mr. Reacher,” he said. “Answer my question.”

I shrugged.

[197] “Ask the army,” I said.

[198] “I will,” he said. “You can be damn sure of that. Did you get an honorable discharge?”

[199] “Would they give me severance if I didn’t?” I said.

[200] “Why should I believe they gave you a dime?” he said. “You live like a damn vagrant. Honorable discharge? Yes or no?”

[201] “Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

[202] He made another note. Thought for a while.

[203] “How did it make you feel, being let go?” he asked.

[204] I thought about it. Shrugged at him.

[205] “Didn’t make me feel like anything,” I said. “Made me feel like I was in the army, and now I’m not in the army.”

[206] “Do you feel bitter?” he said. “Let down?”

[207] “No,” I said. “Should I?”

[208] “No problems at all?” he asked. Like there had to be something.

[209] I felt like I had to give him some kind of an answer. But I couldn’t think of anything. I had been in the service since the day I was born. Now I was out. Being out felt great. Felt like freedom. Like all my life I’d had a slight headache. Not noticing until it was gone. My only problem was making a living. How to make a living without giving up the freedom was not an easy trick. I hadn’t earned a cent in six months. That was my only problem. But I wasn’t about to tell Finlay that. He’d see it as a motive. He’d think I had decided to bankroll my vagrant lifestyle by robbing people. At warehouses. And then killing them.