Bad Luck and Trouble (40 page)

There were two main ways to engineer a visit with someone returning to their home. Either you let them settle and then gave them a compelling reason why they should let you in later, or you followed hard on their heels and rushed them while they still had their keys out or their door open.

“Now,” Reacher said.

They slid out and locked up and ran. Safe enough. A lone man running could look suspicious. A lone woman rarely did. A man and a woman running together were usually taken as jogging buddies, or a couple just out having fun.

They made it into the cul-de-sac and saw nothing at first. There was a rise, and then a curve. They made it through the curve in time to see a garage door opening next to a house about a third of the way down the street, on the right. Berenson’s silver Toyota was waiting on a blacktop driveway. The house was small and neat. Faced with brick. Painted trim. The front yard was full of rocks and gravel and all kinds of colorful blooms. There was a basketball hoop over the garage. The rising door was letting in enough light to show a tangle of kid stuff stacked against a wall inside. A bike, a skateboard, a Little League bat, knee pads, helmets, gloves.

The Toyota’s brake lights went off and it crept forward. Neagley sprinted. She was much faster than Reacher. She made it inside the garage just as the door started back down. Reacher arrived about ten seconds after her and used his foot to trip the safety mechanism. He waited until the door rose again to waist height and then he ducked under it and stepped inside.

Margaret Berenson was already out of her car. Neagley had one gloved hand in her hair and the other clamped around both of her wrists from behind. Berenson was struggling, but not much. She stopped altogether after Neagley forced her face down and tapped it twice against the Toyota’s hood. At that point she went limp and started yelling. She stopped yelling exactly a second later after Neagley straightened her up again and turned her toward Reacher and Reacher popped her in the solar plexus, once, gently, just enough to drive the air out of her lungs.

Then Reacher stepped away and hit the button and the door started down again. There was a weak bulb in the opener on the ceiling and as the sunlight cut off it was replaced by a dim yellow glow. At the right rear of the garage there was a door to the outside, and another on the left that would lead to the interior of the house. There was an alarm pad next to it.

“Is it set?” Reacher asked.

“Yes,” Berenson said, breathlessly.

“No,” Neagley said. She nodded toward the bike and the skateboard. “The kid is about twelve years old. Mom was out early this morning. The kid made the school bus on his own for once. Probably unusual. Setting the alarm won’t be a part of his normal routine.”

“Maybe Dad set it.”

“Dad is long gone. Mom isn’t wearing a ring.”

“Boyfriend?”

“You must be kidding.”

Reacher tried the door. It was locked. He pulled the keys out of the Toyota’s ignition and thumbed through the ring and found a house key. It fit the lock and turned. The door opened. No warning beeps. Thirty seconds later, no lights, no siren.

“You tell a lot of lies, Ms. Berenson,” he said.

Berenson said nothing.

Neagley said, “She’s Human Resources. It’s what they do.”

Reacher held the door and Neagley bundled Berenson through a laundry room and into a kitchen. The house had been built before developers started making kitchens as big as aircraft hangars, so it was just a small square room full of cabinets and appliances a few years off the pace. There was a table and two chairs. Neagley forced Berenson down into one and Reacher headed back to the garage and rooted around until he found a half-used roll of duct tape on a shelf. With gloves on he couldn’t unpick the end so he stepped back to the kitchen and used a knife from a maple block. He taped Berenson tight to the chair, torso, arms, legs, fast and efficient.

“We were in the army,” he said to her. “We mentioned that, right? When we needed information, our first port of call was the company clerk. That’s you. So start talking.”

“You’re crazy,” Berenson said back.

“Tell me about the car wreck.”

“The what?”

“Your scars.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Was it bad?”

“Awful.”

“This could be much worse.” Reacher put the kitchen knife on the table and followed it with the Glock from one pocket and Tony Swan’s lump of concrete from the other. “Stab wounds, gunshot wounds, blunt trauma. I’ll let you choose.”

Berenson started to cry. Hopeless, helpless sobs and wails. Her shoulders shook and her head dropped and tears dripped into her lap.

“Not helping,” Reacher said. “You’re crying at the wrong guy.”

Berenson lifted her head and turned and looked at Neagley. Neagley’s face was about as expressive as Swan’s lump of concrete.

“Start talking,” Reacher said.

“I can’t,” Berenson said. “He’ll hurt my son.”

“Who will?”

“I’m not allowed to say.”

“Lamaison?”

“I can’t say.”

“It’s time to make up your mind, Margaret. We want to know who knew and who flew. Right now we’re including you in. You want us to include you out, you’ve got some serious talking to do.”

“He’ll hurt my son.”

“Lamaison will?”

“I can’t say who.”

“Look at it from our side, Margaret. If in doubt, we’ll take you out.”

Berenson said nothing.

“Be smart, Margaret,” Reacher said. “Whoever is threatening your son, you make a good case against him, he’ll be dead. He won’t be able to hurt anyone.”

“I can’t rely on that.”

“Just shoot her,” Neagley said. “She’s wasting our time.”

Reacher stepped to the refrigerator and opened it. Took out a plastic bottle of Evian water. Flat, French, gallon for gallon three times as expensive as gasoline. He unscrewed the top and took a long drink. Offered the bottle to Neagley. She shook her head. He emptied the rest of the water in the sink and stepped back to the table and used the kitchen knife to saw an oval hole in the bottom of the bottle. He fitted it over the Glock’s muzzle. Adjusted it neatly so that the screw neck lined up exactly with the barrel.

“A home-made silencer,” he said. “The neighbors won’t hear a thing. It only works once, but once is all it has to.”

He held the gun a foot and a half from Berenson’s face and aimed it so that she was staring straight into the bottle with her right eye.

Berenson started talking.

67

In retrospect it was a tale that Reacher could have scripted in advance. The original development engineer up at the Highland Park plant was now the quality control manager and he had started showing signs of severe stress. His name was Edward Dean and he lived way to the north, beyond the mountains. By chance his annual performance review was scheduled three weeks after he started his weird behavior. Being a trained professional, Margaret Berenson noticed his distress, and she pursued the matter.

At first Dean claimed his move north was the root of his problem. He had wanted a relaxed lifestyle and had bought acres of land out in the desert some ways south of Palmdale. The commute was killing him. Berenson didn’t buy that. All Angelinos had the commute from hell. So then Dean said his neighbors were problematical. There were outlaw bikers and meth labs close by. Berenson was readier to believe that. Stories about the badlands were legion. But a pained echo in a chance remark about Dean’s daughter led her to believe that the kid was in some way the problem. She was fourteen years old. Berenson put two and two together and made five. She figured maybe the kid was hanging with the bikers or experimenting with crystal and causing big problems at home.

Then she revised her opinion. The quality problems up at Highland Park became common knowledge inside the company. Berenson knew that Dean had a difficult split responsibility. As a director of the corporation he had a fiduciary duty to see it do well. But he also had a parallel responsibility to the Pentagon to make sure New Age sold it only the good stuff. Berenson figured the conflict in his mind was causing his stress. But overall he was doing the right thing according to the law, so she shelved her concerns.

Then Tony Swan disappeared.

He just vanished. One day he was there, the next day he wasn’t. Being a trained professional, Margaret Berenson noticed his absence. She followed up. She had split responsibilities of her own. Swan had classified knowledge. There were national security implications. She got into it like a dog with a bone. She asked all kinds of questions of all kinds of people.

Then one day she got home and found Allen Lamaison on her driveway, playing one-on-one basketball with her son.

Berenson was afraid of Lamaison. Always had been. How much, she hadn’t really realized until she saw him tousle her twelve-year-old’s hair with a hand big enough to crush the child’s skull. He suggested the kid stay outside and practice his foul throws while he went inside for an important chat with Mom.

The chat started with a confession. Lamaison told Berenson exactly what had happened to Swan. Every detail. And he hinted as to the reason. This time Berenson put two and two together and made four. She recalled Dean’s stress. By and by Lamaison revealed that Dean was cooperating with a special project, because if he didn’t his daughter would disappear and be found weeks later with blood running down to her ankles amid a happy band of bikers.

Or on the other hand, maybe she would never be found at all.

Then Lamaison said the exact same thing could happen to Berenson’s son. He said a lot of outlaw bikers were happy to swing both ways. Most of them had been in prison, and prison distorted a person’s tastes.

He issued a warning, and two instructions. The warning was that sooner or later two men and two women would show up and start asking questions. Old friends from Swan’s service days. The first instruction was that they were to be deflected, firmly, politely, and definitively. The second instruction was that nothing of this current conversation was ever to be revealed.

Then he made Berenson take him upstairs and perform a certain sexual act on him. To seal their understanding, he said.

Then he went out and sank a few more baskets with her son.

Then he drove away.

Reacher believed her. In his life he had listened to people telling lies, and less often to people telling the truth. He knew how to distinguish between the two. He knew what to trust and what to distrust. He was a supremely cynical man, but his special talent lay in retaining a small corner of open-mindedness. He believed the basketball part, and the prison reference, and the sex act. People like Margaret Berenson didn’t make up that kind of stuff. They couldn’t. Their frames of reference weren’t wide enough. He took the kitchen knife and cut the duct tape off her. Helped her to her feet.

“So who knew?” he asked.

“Lamaison,” Berenson said. “Lennox, Parker, and Saropian.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“What about the other four ex-LAPD?”

“They’re different. From a different era and a different place. Lamaison wouldn’t really trust them on a thing like this.”

“So why did he hire them?”

“Warm bodies. Numbers. And he trusts them on everything else. They do what he tells them.”

“Why did he hire Tony Swan? Swan was always going to be a rod for his back.”

“Lamaison didn’t hire Swan. He didn’t want him. But I convinced our CEO we needed some diversity of background. It wasn’t healthy to have all of them from the same place.”

“So you hired him?”

“Basically. I’m sorry.”

“Where did all the bad stuff happen?”

“Highland Park. The helicopter is there. And there are outbuildings. It’s a big place.”

“Is there somewhere you can go?” Reacher asked.

“Go?” Berenson said.

“For a couple of days, until this is over.”

“It won’t be over. You don’t know Lamaison. You can’t beat him.”

Reacher looked at Neagley.

“Can we beat him?” he asked.

“Like a drum,” she said.

Berenson said, “But there are four of them.”

“Three,” Reacher said. “Saropian is already down. Three of them, four of us.”

“You’re crazy.”

“They’re going to think so. That’s for damn sure. They’re going to think I’m completely psychotic.”

Berenson was quiet for a long moment.

“I could go to a hotel,” she said.

“When does your son get home?”

“I’ll go get him out of school.”

Reacher nodded. “Pack your bags.”

Berenson said, “I will.”

“Who flew?” Reacher asked.

“Lamaison, Lennox, and Parker. Just the three of them.”

“Plus the pilot,” Reacher said. “That’s four.”