Tripwire Part 6

It was a narrow country road, domesticated with ranch fencing in rough timber and tamed with mowed shoulders and specimen plantings. There were mailboxes a hundred yards apart and poles that hung cables through the treetops.

'Whoa,' the woman said, surprised. 'I guess this is it.'

The road was already narrow, and now it became just about impa.s.sable. There was a long line of cars parked up on the shoulder. Maybe forty automobiles, many of them black or dark blue. All neat late-model sedans or big sport-utilities. The woman eased the taxi into the driveway. The line of parked cars stretched nose-to-tail all the way to the house. Another ten or twelve cars were parked together on the ap.r.o.n in front of the garage. Two of them were plain Detroit sedans, in flat green. Army vehicles. Reacher could spot Defense Department issue a mile away.

'OK?' the woman asked him.

'I guess,' he said, cautiously.

He peeled a fifty off his roll and handed it to her. Got out and stood in the driveway, unsure. He heard the taxi whine away in reverse. He walked back up to the road. Looked at the long line of cars. Looked at the mailbox. There was a name spelled out in little aluminium letters along the top of it. The name was Garber. A name he knew as well as his own.

The house was set in a large lot, casually landscaped, placed somewhere comfortable in the region between natural and neglected. The house itself was low and sprawling, dark cedar siding, dark screens at the windows, big stone chimney, somewhere between suburban modest and cosy cottage. It was very quiet. The air smelled hot and damp and fecund. He could hear insects ma.s.sing in the undergrowth. He could sense the river beyond the house, a mile-wide void dragging stray sounds away to the south.

He walked closer and heard muted conversation behind the house. People talking low, maybe a lot of people. He walked down towards the sound and came out around the side of the garage. He was at the top of a flight of cement steps, looking west across the backyard to the river, blue and blinding in the sun. A mile away in the haze, slightly north-west to his right, was West Point, low and grey in the distance.

The backyard was a flat area cleared out of the woods on the top of the bluff. It was covered in coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, mowed short, and there was a solemn crowd of a hundred people standing in it. They were all dressed in black, men and women alike, black suits and ties and blouses and shoes, except for half a dozen Army officers in full dress uniform. They were all talking quietly, soberly, juggling paper buffet plates and gla.s.ses of wine, sadness in the slope of their shoulders.

A funeral. He was gate-crashing a funeral. He stood there awkwardly, looming against the skyline in the gear he had thrown on yesterday in the Keys, faded chinos, creased pale yellow shirt, no socks, scuffed shoes, sun-bleached hair sticking out all over the place, a day's beard on his face. He gazed down at the group of mourners and as if he had suddenly clapped his hands they all fell silent and turned to look up at him. He froze. They all stared at him, quietly, inquiringly, and he looked back at them, blankly. There was silence. Stillness. Then a woman moved. She handed her paper plate and her gla.s.s to the nearest bystander and stepped forward.

She was a young woman, maybe thirty, dressed like the others in a severe black suit. She was pale and strained, but very beautiful. Achingly beautiful. Very slim, tall in her heels, long legs in sheer dark nylon. Fine blond hair, long and unstyled, blue eyes, fine bones. She moved delicately across the lawn and stopped at the bottom of the cement steps, like she was waiting for him to come down to her.

'h.e.l.lo, Reacher,' she said, softly.

He looked down at her. She knew who he was. And he knew who she was. It came to him suddenly like a stop-motion film blasting through fifteen years in a single glance. A teenage girl grew up and blossomed into a beautiful woman right in front of his eyes, all in a split second. Garber, the name on the mailbox. Leon Garber, for many years his commanding officer. He recalled their early acquaintance, getting to know each other at backyard barbecues on hot wet evenings in the Philippines. A slender girl gliding in and out of the shadows around the bleak base house, enough of a woman at fifteen to be utterly captivating but enough of a girl to be totally forbidden. Jodie, Garber's daughter. His only child. The light of his life. This was Jodie Garber, fifteen years later, all grown up and beautiful and waiting for him at the bottom of a set of cement steps.

He glanced at the crowd and went down the steps to the lawn.

'h.e.l.lo, Reacher,' she said again.

Her voice was low and strained. Sad, like the scene around her.

'h.e.l.lo, Jodie,' he said.

Then he wanted to ask who died? But he couldn't frame it in any way that wasn't going to sound callous, or stupid. She saw him struggling, and nodded.

'Dad,' she said simply.

'When?' he asked.

'Five days ago,' she said. 'He was sick the last few months, but it was sudden at the end. A surprise, I guess.'

He nodded slowly.

'I'm very sorry,' he said.

He glanced at the river and the hundred faces in front of him became a hundred faces of Leon Garber. A short, squat, tough man. A wide smile he always used whether he was happy or annoyed or in danger. A brave man, physically and mentally. A great leader. Honest as the day is long, fair, perceptive. Reacher's role model during his vital formative years. His mentor and his sponsor. His protector. He had gone way out on a limb and promoted him twice in an eighteen-month span which made Reacher the youngest peacetime major anybody could remember. Then he had spread his blunt hands wide and smiled and disclaimed any credit for his ensuing successes.

'I'm very sorry, Jodie,' he said again.

She nodded silently.

'I can't believe it,' he said. 'I can't take it in. I saw him less than a year ago. He was in good shape then. He got sick?'

She nodded again, still silent.

'But he was always so tough,' he said.

She nodded, sadly. 'He was, wasn't he? Always so tough.'

'And not old,' he said.

'Sixty-four,'

'So what happened?'

'His heart,' she said. 'It got him in the end. Remember how he always liked to pretend he didn't have one?'

Reacher shook his head. 'Biggest heart you ever saw.'

'I found that out,' she said. 'When Mom died, we were best friends for ten years. I loved him.'

'I loved him too,' Reacher said. 'Like he was my dad, not yours.'

She nodded again. 'He still talked about you all the time.'

Reacher looked away. Stared out at the unfocused shape of the West Point buildings, grey in the haze. He was numb. He was in that age zone where people he knew died. His father was dead, his mother was dead, his brother was dead. Now the nearest thing to a subst.i.tute relative was dead, too.

'He had a heart attack six months ago,' Jodie said. Her eyes clouded and she hooked her long straight hair behind her ear. 'He sort of recovered for a spell, looked pretty good, but really he was failing fast. They were considering a bypa.s.s, but he took a turn for the worse and went down too quickly. He wouldn't have survived the surgery.'

'I'm very sorry,' he said, for the third time.

She turned alongside him and threaded her arm through his.

'Don't be,' she said. 'He was always a very contented guy. Better for him to go fast. I couldn't see him being happy lingering on.'

Reacher had a flash in his mind of the old Garber, bustling and raging, a fireball of energy, and he understood how desperate it would have made him to become an invalid. Understood too how that overloaded old heart had finally given up the struggle. He nodded, unhappily.

'Come and meet some people,' Jodie said. 'Maybe you know some of them.'

'I'm not dressed for this,' he said. 'I feel bad. I should go.'

'Doesn't matter,' she said. 'You think Dad would care?'

He saw Garber in his old creased khaki and his battered hat. He was the worst-dressed officer in the US Army, all thirteen years Reacher had served under him. He smiled, briefly.

'I guess he wouldn't mind,' he said.

She walked him on to the lawn. There were maybe six people out of the hundred he recognized. A couple of the guys in uniform were familiar. A handful in suits were men he'd worked with here and there in another lifetime. He shook hands with dozens of people and tried to listen to the names, but they went in one ear and out the other. Then the quiet chatter and the eating and the drinking started up again, the crowd closed around him, and the sensation of his untidy arrival was smoothed over and forgotten. Jodie still had hold of his arm. Her hand was cool on his skin.

'I'm looking for somebody,' he said. 'That's why I'm here, really.'

'I know,' she said. 'Mrs Jacob, right?'

He nodded.

'Is she here?' he asked.

I'm Mrs Jacob,' she said.

The two guys in the black Tahoe backed it out of the line of cars, out from under the power lines so the car phone would work without interference. The driver dialled a number and the ring tone filled the quiet vehicle. Then the call was answered sixty miles south and eighty-eight floors up.

'Problems, boss,' the driver said. 'There's some sort of a wake going on here, a funeral or something. Must be a hundred people milling around. We got no chance of grabbing this Mrs Jacob. We can't even tell which one she is. There are dozens of women here, she could be any one of them.'

The speaker relayed a grunt from Hobie. 'And?'

'The guy from the bar down in the Keys? He just showed up here in a d.a.m.n taxi. Got here about ten minutes after we did, strolled right in.'

The speaker crackled. No discernible reply.

'So what do we do?' the driver asked.

'Stick with it,' Hobie's voice said. 'Maybe hide the vehicle and lay up someplace. Wait until everybody leaves. It's her house, as far as I can tell. Maybe the family home or a weekend place. So everybody else will leave, and she'll be the one who stays. Don't you come back here without her, OK?'

'What about the big guy?'

'If he leaves, let him go. If he doesn't, waste him. But bring me this Jacob woman.'

'You're Mrs Jacob?' Reacher asked.

Jodie Garber nodded.

'Am, was,' she said. 'I'm divorced, but I keep the name for work.'

'Who was he?'

She shrugged.

'A lawyer, like me. It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

'How long?'

'Three years, beginning to end. We met at law school, got married when we got jobs. I stayed on Wall Street, but he went to a firm in DC, couple of years ago. The marriage didn't go with him, just kind of petered out. The papers came through last fall. I could hardly remember who he was. Just a name, Alan Jacob.'

Reacher stood in the sunny yard and looked at her. He realized he was upset that she had been married.

She had been a skinny kid but totally gorgeous at fifteen, self-confident and innocent and a little shy about it all at the same time. He had watched the battle between her shyness and her curiosity as she sat and worked up the courage to talk to him about death and life and good and evil. Then she would fidget and tuck her bony knees up under her and work the conversation around to love and s.e.x and men and women. Then she would blush and disappear. He would be left alone, icy inside, captivated by her and angry at himself for it. Days later he would see her somewhere around the base, still blushing furiously. And now fifteen years later she was a grown woman, college and law school, married and divorced, beautiful and composed and elegant, standing there in her dead father's yard with her arm linked through his.

'Are you married?' she asked him.

He shook his head. 'No.'

'But are you happy?'

'I'm always happy,' he said. 'Always was, always will be.'

'Doing what?'

He shrugged.

'Nothing much,' he said.

He glanced over the top of her head and scanned the faces in the crowd. Subdued busy people, substantial lives, big careers, all of them moving steadily from A to Z. He looked at them and wondered if they were the fools, or if he was. He recalled the expression on Costello's face.

'I was just in the Keys,' he said. 'Digging swimming pools with a shovel.'

Her face didn't change. She tried to squeeze his forearm with her hand, but her hand was too small and his arm was too big. It came out as a gentle pressure from her palm.

'Costello find you down there?' she asked.

He didn't find me to invite me to a funeral, he thought.

'We need to talk about Costello,' he said.

'He's good, isn't he?'

Not good enough, he thought. She moved away to circulate through the crowd. People were waiting to offer their second-layer condolences. They were getting loose from the wine, and the buzz of talk was getting louder and more sentimental. Reacher drifted over to a patio, where a long table with a white cloth held food. He loaded a paper plate with cold chicken and rice and took a gla.s.s of water. There was an ancient patio furniture set, ignored by the others because it was all spotted with little grey-green botanical droppings from the trees. The sun umbrella was stiff and faded white. Reacher ducked under it and sat quietly in a dirty chair on his own.

He watched the crowd as he ate. People were reluctant to leave. The affection for old Leon Garber was palpable. A guy like that generates affection in others, maybe too much to express to his face, so it has to all come out later. Jodie was moving through the crowd, nodding, clasping hands, smiling sadly. Everybody had a tale to tell her, an anecdote about witnessing Garber's heart of gold peeping out from under his gruff and irascible exterior. He could add a few stories. But he wouldn't, because Jodie didn't need it explained to her that her father had been one of the good guys. She knew. She was moving with the serenity of a person who had loved the old guy all her life, and had been loved back. There was nothing she had neglected to tell him, nothing he had neglected to tell her. People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there's nothing much to regret.

They found a place on the same road that was obviously a weekend cottage, closed up tight and unoccupied. They backed the Tahoe around behind the garage where it was hidden from the street, but ready for pursuit. They took the nine-millimetres out of the glove box and stowed them in their jacket pockets. Walked back down to the road and ducked into the undergrowth.

It was hard going. They were just sixty miles north of Manhattan, but they might as well have been in the jungles of Borneo. There were ragged vines tangled everywhere, grabbing at them, tripping them, whipping their faces and hands. The trees were second-growth native broadleafs, growing wild, basically weeds, and their branches came out of them at crazy low angles. They took to walking backwards, forcing their way through. When they got level with the Garber driveway, they were panting and gasping and smeared with moss and green pollen dust. They pushed through on to the property and found a depression in the ground where they were concealed. They ducked left and right to get a view of the pathway leading up from the backyard. People were heading out, getting ready to leave.

It was becoming obvious which one was Mrs Jacob. If Hobie was right and this was her place, then she was the thin blonde shaking hands and saying goodbye like all these departing people had been her guests. They were leaving, she was staying. She was Mrs Jacob. They watched her, the centre of attention, smiling bravely, embracing, waving. People filed up the driveway, ones and twos, then larger groups. Cars were starting. Blue exhaust haze was drifting. They could hear the hiss and groan of power steering as people eased out of the tight line. The rub of tyres on pavement. The burble of motors accelerating away down the road. This was going to be easy. Pretty soon she was going to be standing there all by herself, all choked up and sad. Then she was going to get a couple of extra visitors. Maybe she would see them coming and take them for a couple of mourners arriving late. After all, they were dressed in dark suits and ties. What fits in down in Manhattan's financial district looks just about right for a funeral.

Reacher followed the last two guests up the cement steps and out of the yard. One was a colonel and the other was a two-star general, both in immaculate dress uniform. It was what he had expected. A place with free food and drink, the soldiers will always be the last to leave. He didn't know the colonel, but he thought he vaguely recognized the general. He thought the general recognized him, too, but neither of them pursued it. No desire on either part to get into long and complicated so-what-are-you-doing-now explanations.

The bra.s.s shook hands quite formally with Jodie and then they snapped to attention and saluted. Crisp parade-ground moves, gleaming boots smashing into the blacktop, eyes rigidly to the front, thousand-yard stares, all quite bizarre in the green stillness of a suburban driveway. They got into the last car left on the garage ap.r.o.n, one of the flat green sedans parked nearest to the house. First to arrive, last to leave. Peacetime, no Cold War, nothing to do all day. It was why Reacher had been happy when they cut him loose, and as he watched the green car turn and head out, he knew he was right to be happy.

Jodie stepped sideways to him and linked her arm through his again.

'So,' she said quietly. 'That's that.'

Then there was just building silence as the noise from the green car faded and died along the road.

'Where's he buried?' Reacher asked.

'The town cemetery,' she said. 'He could have chosen Arlington, of course, but he didn't want that. You want to go up there?'