Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (28 page)

They all knew each other. Mildly surprising. Maybe Hale had bedded Sylvia. Unremarkable. Hale was a notorious womanizer. Definitely not the boyfriend type.

But Cooper?

Elle had described Sylvia’s FBI boyfriend.
Tall. Built. Gorgeous eyes. High level job over there in the Hoover building.

Cooper. Self-described serial monogamist. Could he have been that dumb? Maybe Hale wasn’t the only Hoover building occupant Sylvia had screwed.

Kim berated herself for being so stupid.

But everything’s obvious once you know it.

Hale ignored Sylvia’s greeting. “Otto, what’s this about?”

Sylvia returned to her perch on the white sofa. She was more relaxed than anyone else in the room. Kim delivered by rote, “Susan Kane, a/k/a Sylvia Kent Black, has agreed to testify against her accomplices in matters related to the murder of Harry Black.”

Hale looked straight at Sylvia.

“That so?” he said. “You’re going to admit everything?”

Sylvia batted her eyelashes and raised her right hand and said, “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

Hale flushed pink from his stiff white collar right up to his sandy hairline. His eyes narrowed, either in incomprehension or calculation. Kim couldn’t tell. His tone was hard enough to cut diamonds. He said, “In exchange for what?”

“Dangerous people will be looking for me. You and Mr. Cooper can fix that, can’t you?” Sylvia’s tone was so sweet it made Kim’s teeth ache.

Hale’s face turned redder. “You agreed we wouldn’t need to help you again. Yet, here you are, and it’s not a minor prostitution charge this time, is it?”

Sylvia’s breathless little voice begged, “I’m innocent, Mickey. You know I didn’t kill anybody. Helping me again shouldn’t be a problem for Charlie, should it?”

Mickey?

Charlie?

Hale looked like he’d swallowed a turd. His eyes bulged from his head. “We’re not in the immunity business. But if your testimony is valuable enough, I suppose we might help. What are you offering?”

She said, “Who killed Harry.”

Hale was unmoved. “That might be of minor interest to the Margrave Police Chief. It’s of no interest to me.”

Sylvia remained quiet for a minute. Then she looked at Kim, and Gaspar. Then her gaze returned to Hale. She said, “I suppose I could talk about
why
he killed Harry, too.”

Kim had to hand it to her. Men had followed women like Sylvia right off a cliff since the dawn of sex. Sylvia was smoking hot. And while not brilliant, she was undeniably clever. Harry Black, the poor bastard, had never stood a chance. Yep. Sylvia was a stone cold bitch.

Hale’s eyes were slits. “What do you mean? Exactly?”

Sylvia straightened her skirt and crossed her remarkably long legs, giving him a full shot view up her thigh. “I shouldn’t say more until my lawyer is present, should I? Maybe we can get the whole truth recorded tomorrow morning? Would that work? I’m at the Hay Adams. These agents can escort me. I’ll call my lawyer and we’ll take care of everything tomorrow. How’s that?”

Hale covered the short distance to Sylvia and grabbed her bicep and jerked her off the sofa and shoved her hard against Gaspar. “Bring her to Cooper’s office in the morning. Eight o’clock sharp.”

And then he stalked out.

Which was when Kim knew for sure. Hale was expendable. They all were. Except Cooper. Rank had its privileges. Cooper was the top dog. Untouchable without hard evidence. Suicide to try.

If the situation went sideways others would take the hit.

Gaspar had been right all along.

They were all involved in it.

Reacher, too. Had to be.

Cooper was the leader. Had Reacher crossed him somehow? Had Cooper sent them to find Reacher for some private purpose?

Possible.

There was plausible deniability all around if they succeeded. If they failed, everyone except Cooper went down. Cooper would make it so.

CHAPTER FORTY

Washington, D.C.

November 3

6:35 p.m.

Kim paced the room for a solid half hour, seeking solutions, but getting nothing except impatient and thirty minutes older. Gaspar waited quietly, butt in chair, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, hands folded, eyes closed. He said, “We could follow orders for once. We could deliver Sylvia in the morning. And return to normal life.”

His laconic style was familiar to her by then, but no less maddening. “But don’t you feel like a first class patsy? And what do we tell Roscoe? Have you even thought about that? She’s going down in flames and Sylvia walks free? Again? Sixty-seven
million
dollars richer? And Cooper, too? Does that seem right to you? And what about Reacher? Do we leave him out there doing God knows what to God knows whom?”

No response.

Her hands balled into fists. “Well?”

“Tantrums never work on me,” he said, unmoved. “But anyway, in answer to your questions, in order of asking, yes, I don’t know, yes, sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks, no, don’t care, sucks, deep subject.”

She was not amused. “Are you going to help me or not?”

He stood and stretched. He limped around the spacious room. He stopped outside the door to Sylvia’s bedroom and stared as if he had x-ray vision or supersonic hearing. He ran a hand through his hair. He limped some more. He returned to his seat.

He said, “Of course, I’ll help you. But with what? There’s something going on here, and it’s buried deep. I don’t even know what it is, let alone know how to prove it. We turn all this over to an internal investigations unit and they fail, too, and then what? Give me a stroke of genius and I’ll be there. Otherwise, I don’t see any options except deliver Sylvia in the morning.”

She sighed.

He pressed. “Any bright ideas? Preferably something that won’t get us fired? Did I mention I have a large family?”

She said nothing.

He said, “That’s what I thought. You got zilch.”

He was wrong, technically. She had one desperate, last-ditch option. But she didn’t describe it. Maybe she would never need to. Maybe something else would come along.

She went back to pacing. She talked as she walked. “Roscoe said Archie Leach is howling because we left before he debriefed us. He wants vengeance for his brother.”

Gaspar said, “We didn’t kill his brother. So how is Archie Leach our problem?”

“Cooper called you after the fire in the mailbox store.”

“Right.”

“He asked you about Sylvia’s mail. You told him everything. The smashed mailbox theory, forwarded envelopes, the list of box holders, and how you found her mug shot.”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t ask to see the list?”

“No.”

“That’s weird, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“You saw the list just like I did. His name is on it. And so is mine. And yours. He wasn’t even interested?”

Blandly, like he was calming a suicide, Gaspar said, “But I didn’t know all that when I was talking to him. You took the list with you, remember? To the bar? In your pocket?”

“But he had to know, right? So it’s weird that he didn’t ask or deal with it somehow, isn’t it?”

“You’re wearing me out.”

“Isn’t it?”

“We’ve been over this, Sunshine. All we have is the list. Nothing else. If it comes to it, he’ll say he has no idea why his name was on the list, and he’ll say he didn’t have a mailbox at Bernie’s, and we’ll believe him, because we have no idea why our names were on the list either, and we sure didn’t have mailboxes at Bernie’s.”

“Cooper is involved with Sylvia.”

“Sex is not illegal.”

“Sylvia laundered the money and stole it from Harry and killed him.”

“Maybe so. No proof, though. And nothing connecting Cooper to any of that.”

When she didn’t raise anything else, he said, “Can I go to sleep now?”

She patted herself down, checked her gun and her pockets, and walked toward the door.

Stretched out in his chair, eyes closed, Gaspar asked, “Where are you going?”

“To call Finlay.”

He didn’t move so much as an eyelid. But his tone conveyed every catastrophic consequence she’d already argued in her head. “If anybody asks, you’re on your own. I’ve got a family to feed. Did I mention that? Twenty years left. Fit for no other work. Not even fit for this, to be honest. I’m a charity case. You can throw your career out the window, but please don’t add mine to the landfill while you’re at it.”

“Cooper’s not God, you know,” she reminded him, in his own words.

“He’s the God of my family dinner. And yours, too. Whatever special relationship you think you two have, Sunshine, make no mistake. He’ll throw you under the train in a Hot’lanta second and never look back.”

Only one choice.

She opened the door. Looked back. He hadn’t moved.

“I was wrong about you,” she said. “Zorro, you’re not.”

“Sad but true,” he said, and the door slammed behind her.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Washington, D.C.

November 3

7:15 p.m.

Kim got a cab outside the hotel and sharpened her plan on the fly. It was cold, but she barely noticed. She thought through her counter-surveillance options but knew she was unlikely to hide much. Unmonitored transmissions in Washington, D.C., were as scarce as innocent felons. The very airwaves were alive with ears and eyes every moment of every day.

Best case: Cooper was otherwise occupied at that moment. He was covering a private operation solo and off the books. There would be inevitable windows of surveillance black-out. He wasn’t God. He could find the pieces afterward, but he might not be observing in real time.

But he’d anticipate her call to Finlay. He’d be ready to intercept. The problem gnawed at her. She rubbed Finlay’s card inside her pocket. She needed an unpredictable location. And fast. The Redskins’ FedEx Field would work, but there wasn’t enough time to get there and back.

Only one choice.

Which was: Verizon Center during tonight’s hockey game.

Twenty-thousand-plus in attendance; most of them using electronic devices. On a pre-paid burner phone, she would be as anonymous as any hay straw in the stack.

The cab ride took eight minutes door-to-door in light traffic. The game was already in progress. She used the media entrance at 6th and G Streets Northwest. She flashed her badge everywhere she needed to. She found the best reception she was likely to get. She put a finger in her opposite ear to mute the screaming crowd. She called the number.

Finlay answered on the fourth ring. Boston accent. Rich baritone.

He said, “How can I help you?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me,” she said. “We’ve hit a snag.”

“Your partner knows you’re calling?”

“Yes. But he advised me not to.”

“Because you’ve worked your way up the food chain to the killer whale?”

“Correct.”

“And you want me to remove the obstacle in your path. Why would I do that?”

Trading favors. What did Kim have that Finlay wanted? “You tell me.”

“Much has changed since we met. You’re operating under a bright spotlight now.”

But his price might be too steep. “Can you help or not?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“How far you’re willing to go.”

Kim paused briefly. Reflex.
Only one choice.
“I think we understand each other, Mr. Finlay. One more thing. Roscoe’s in trouble. Friendly fire. Fix it.”

Silence. Had he not anticipated her demand? He said, “Agreed. I’ve left a package for you at the Swiss embassy. Offer expires in twenty minutes. Your taxi’s waiting.”

Connection terminated.

She checked her watch. Fifteen minute trip in the opposite direction under current conditions. She burned five extra minutes to dispose of the phone, exit on F Street, and flag a new cab of her own. “Twenty-nine hundred Cathedral Avenue Northwest. And I’m in a hurry.”

#

The cab pulled up in front of an unimpressive building. Tan brick boxes joined by a brown mullioned glass structure all seemed deserted. A lone security guard waited inside the locked gate. Kim asked the cab to wait.