It was Costello. His face was pounded to pulp. Masked in blood. There were crusty brown rivulets all over the triangle of blue-white city skin showing through at the neck of his shirt. Reacher felt for the pulse behind the ear. Nothing. He touched the skin with the back of his hand. Cool. No rigor, but then it was a hot night. The guy was dead maybe an hour.
He checked inside the jacket. The overloaded wallet was gone. Then he saw the hands. The fingertips had been sliced off. All ten of them. Quick efficient angled cuts, with something neat and sharp. Not a scalpel. A broader blade. Maybe a linoleum knife.
Chapter 2
"'IT'S MY FAULT," Reacher said.
Crystal shook her head.
"You didn't kill the guy," she said.
Then she looked up at him, sharply. "Did you?"
"I got him killed," Reacher said. "Is there a difference?"
The bar had closed at one o'clock and they were side by side on two chairs next to the empty stage. The lights were off and there was no music. No sound at all, except the hum of the air-conditioning running at quarter speed, sucking the stale smoke and sweat out into the still, night air of the Keys.
"I should have told him," Reacher said. "I should have just told him sure, I'm Jack Reacher. Then he'd have told me whatever he had to tell me, and he'd be back home by now, and I could have just ignored it all anyway. I'd be no worse off, and he'd still be alive."
Crystal was dressed in a white T-shirt. Nothing else. It was a long T-shirt, but not quite long enough. Reacher was not looking at her.
"Why do you care?" she asked.
It was a Keys question. Not callous, just mystified at his concern about a stranger down from another country. He looked at her.
"I feel responsible," he said.
"No, you feel guilty," she said.
He nodded.
"Well, you shouldn't," she said. "You didn't kill him."
"Is there a difference?" he asked again.
"Of course there is," she said. "Who was he?"
"A private detective," he said. "Looking for me."
"Why?"
He shook his head.
"No idea," he said.
"Were those other guys with him?"
He shook his head again.
"No," he said. "Those other guys killed him."
She looked at him, startled. "They did?"
"That's my guess," he said. "They weren't with him, that's for sure. They were younger and richer than he was. Dressed like that? Those suits? Didn't look like his subordinates. Anyway, he struck me as a loner. So the two of them were working for somebody else. Probably told to follow him down here, find out what the hell he was doing. He must have stepped on some toes up north, given somebody a problem. So he was tailed down here. They caught up with him, beat out of him who he was looking for. So then they came looking, too."
"They killed him to get your name?"
"Looks that way," he said.
"Are you going to tell the cops?"
Another Keys question. Involving the cops with anything was a matter for long and serious debate. He shook his head for the third time.
"No," he said.
"They'll trace him, then they'll be looking for you, too."
"Not right away," he said. "There's no ID on the body. And no fingerprints, either. Could be weeks before they even find out who he was."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to find Mrs. Jacob," he said. "The client. She's looking for me."
"You know her?"
"No, but I want to find her."
"Why?"
He shrugged.
"I need to know what's going on," he said.
"Why?" she asked again.
He stood up and looked at her in a mirror on the wall. He was suddenly very restless. Suddenly more than ready to get right back to reality.
"You know why," he said to her. "The guy was killed because of something to do with me, so that makes me involved, OK?"
She stretched a long, bare leg onto the chair he had just vacated. Pondered his feeling of involvement like it was some kind of an obscure hobby. Legitimate, but strange, like folk dancing.
"OK, so how?" she asked.
"I'll go to his office," he said. "Maybe he had a secretary. At least there'll be records there. Phone numbers, addresses, client agreements. This Mrs. Jacob was probably his latest case. She'll probably be top of the pile."
"So where's his office?"
"I don't know," he said. " New York somewhere, according to the way he sounded. I know his name, I know he was an ex-cop. An ex-cop called Costello, about sixty years old. Can't be too hard to find."
"He was an ex-cop?" she asked. "Why?"
"Most private dicks are, right?" he said. "They retire early and poor, they hang out a shingle, they set up as one-man bands, divorce and missing persons. And that thing about my bank? He knew all the details. No way to do that, except through a favor from an old buddy still on the job."
She smiled, slightly interested. Stepped over and joined him near the bar. Stood next to him, close, her hip against his thigh.
"How do you know all this complicated stuff?"
He listened to the rush of the air through the extractors.
"I was an investigator myself," he said. "Military police. Thirteen years. I was pretty good at it. I'm not just a pretty face."
"You're not even a pretty face," she said back. "Don't flatter yourself. When do you start?"
He looked around in the darkness.
"Right now, I guess. Certain to be an early flight out of Miami."
She smiled again. This time, warily.
"And how are you going to get to Miami?" she asked. "This time of night?"
He smiled back at her. Confidently.
"You're going to drive me," he said.
"Do I have time to get dressed?"
"Just shoes," he said.
He walked her around to the garage where her old Porsche was hidden. He rolled the door open and she slid into the car and fired it up. She drove him the half mile north to his motel, taking it slowly, waiting until the oil warmed through. The big tires banged on broken pavement and thumped into potholes. She eased to a stop opposite his neon lobby and waited, the motor running fast against the choke. He opened his door, and then he closed it again, gently.
"Let's just go," he said. "Nothing in there I want to take with me."
She nodded in the glow from the dash.
"OK, buckle up," she said.
She snicked it into first and took off through the town. Cruised up North Roosevelt Drive. Checked the gauges and hung a left onto the causeway. Switched on the radar detectors. Mashed the pedal into the carpet and the rear end dug in hard. Reacher was pressed backward into the leather like he was leaving Key West on board a fighter plane.
SHE KEPT THE Porsche above three figures all the way north to Key Largo. Reacher was enjoying the ride. She was a great driver. Smooth, economical in her movements, flicking up and down the box, keeping the motor wailing, keeping the tiny car in the center of her lane, using the cornering forces to catapult herself out into the straightaways. She was smiling, her flawless face illuminated by the red dials. Not an easy car to drive fast. The heavy motor is slung out way behind the rear axle, ready to swing like a vicious pendulum, ready to trap the driver who gets it wrong for longer than a split second. But she was getting it right. Mile for mile, she was covering the ground as fast as a light plane.
Then the radar detectors started screaming and the lights of Key Largo appeared a mile ahead. She braked hard and rumbled through the town and floored it again and blasted north toward the dark horizon. A tight curving left, over the bridge, onto the mainland of America, and north toward the town called Homestead on a flat, straight road cut through the swamp. Then a tight right onto the highway, high speed all the way, radar detectors on maximum, and they were at Miami Departures just before five o'clock in the morning. She eased to a stop in the drop-off lane and waited, motor running.
"Well, thanks for the ride," Reacher said to her.
She smiled.
"Pleasure," she said. "Believe me."
He opened the door and stared forward.
"OK," he said. "See you later, I guess."
She shook her head.
"No you won't," she said. "Guys like you never come back. You leave, and you don't come back."
He sat in the warmth of her car. The motor popped and burbled. The mufflers ticked as they cooled. She leaned toward him. Dipped the clutch and shoved the gearshift into first so that she had room to get close. Threaded an arm behind his head and kissed him hard on the lips.
"Good-bye, Reacher," she said. "I'm glad I got to know your name, at least."
He kissed her back, hard and long.
"So what's your name?" he asked.
" Crystal," she said, and laughed.
He laughed with her and lifted himself up and out of the car. She leaned across and pulled the door behind him. Gunned the motor and drove away. He stood by himself on the curb and watched her go. She turned in front of a hotel bus and was lost to sight. Three months of his life disappeared with her like the haze of her exhaust.
FIVE O'CLOCK IN the morning, fifty miles north of New York City, the CEO was lying in bed, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. It had just been painted. The whole house had just been painted. He had paid the decorators more than most of his employees earned in a year. Actually, he hadn't paid them. He had fudged their invoice through his office and his company had paid them. The expense was hidden somewhere in the secret spreadsheet, part of a seven-figure total for buildings maintenance. A seven-figure total on the debit side of the accounts, pulling his business down like heavy cargo sinks a listing ship. Like a straw breaks a camel's back.