Chapter 11

I took the guy to a coffee shop on Eighth Avenue. A long time ago I was sent on a one-day MP seminar at Fort Rucker, to learn sensitivity around the recently bereaved. Sometimes MPs had to deliver bad news to relatives. We called them death messages. My skills were widely held to be deficient. I used to walk in and just tell them. I thought that was the nature of a message. But apparently I was wrong. So I was sent to Rucker. I learned good stuff there. I learned to take emotions seriously. Above all I learned that cafés and diners and coffee shops were good environments for bad news. The public atmosphere limits the likelihood of falling apart, and the process of ordering and waiting and sipping punctuates the flow of information in a way that makes it easier to absorb.

We took a booth next to a mirror. That helps, too. You can look at each other in the glass. Face-to-face, but not really. The place was about half-full. Cops from the precinct, taxi drivers on their way to the West Side garages. We ordered coffee. I wanted food too, but I wasn’t going to eat if he didn’t. Not respectful. He said he wasn’t hungry. I sat quiet and waited. Let them talk first, the Rucker psychologists had said.

He told me that his name was Jacob Mark. Originally Markakis in his grandfather’s day, back when a Greek name was no good to anyone, except if you were in the diner business, which his grandfather wasn’t. His grandfather was in the construction business. Hence the change. He said I could call him Jake. I said he could call me Reacher. He told me he was a cop. I told him I had been one once, in the military. He told me he wasn’t married and lived alone. I said the same went for me. Establish common ground, the teachers at Rucker had said. Up close and looking past his physical disarray he was a squared-away guy. He had any cop’s weary gloss, but under it lay a normal suburban man. With a different guidance counselor he might have become a science teacher or a dentist or an auto parts manager. He was in his forties, already very gray, but his face was youthful and unlined. His eyes were dark and wide and staring, but that was temporary. Some hours ago, when he went to bed, he must have been a handsome man. I liked him on sight, and I felt sorry for his situation.

He took a breath and told me his sister’s name was Susan Mark. At one time Susan Molina, but many years divorced and reverted. Now living alone. He talked about her in the present tense. He was a long way from acceptance.

He said, “She can’t have killed herself. It’s just not possible.”

I said, “Jake, I was there.”

The waitress brought our coffee and we sipped in silence for a moment. Passing time, letting reality sink in just a little more. The Rucker psychologists had been explicit: The suddenly bereaved have the IQ of labradors. Indelicate, because they were army, but accurate, because they were psychologists.

Jake said, “So tell me what happened.”

I asked him, “Where are you from?”

He named a small town in northern New Jersey, well inside the New York Metro area, full of commuters and soccer moms, prosperous, safe, contented. He said the police department was well funded, well equipped, and generally understretched. I asked him if his department had a copy of the Israeli list. He said that after the Twin Towers every police department in the country had been buried under paper, and every officer had been required to learn every point on every list.

I said, “Your sister was behaving strangely, Jake. She rang every bell. She looked like a suicide bomber.”

“Bullshit,” he said, like a good brother should.

“Obviously she wasn’t,” I said. “But you would have thought the same thing. You would have had to, with your training.”

“So the list is more about suicide than bombing.”

“Apparently.”

“She wasn’t an unhappy person.”

“She must have been.”

He didn’t reply. We sipped a little more. People came and went. Checks were paid, tips were left. Traffic built up on Eighth.

I said, “Tell me about her.”

He asked, “What gun did she use?”

“An old Ruger Speed-Six.”

“Our dad’s gun. She inherited it.”

“Where did she live? Here, in the city?”

He shook his head. “Annandale, Virginia.”

“Did you know she was up here?”

He shook his head again.

“Why would she come?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would she be wearing a winter coat?”

“I don’t know.”

I said, “Some federal agents came and asked me questions. Then some private guys found me, just before you did. They were all talking about a woman called Lila Hoth. You ever hear that name from your sister?”

“No.”

“What about John Sansom?”

“He’s a congressman from North Carolina. Wants to be a senator. Some kind of hard-ass.”

I nodded. I remembered, vaguely. Election season was gearing up. I had seen newspaper stories and television coverage. Sansom had been a late entrant to politics and was a rising star. He was seen as tough and uncompromising. And ambitious. He had done well in business for a spell and before that he had done well in the army. He hinted at a glamorous Special Forces career, without supplying details. Special Forces careers are good for that kind of thing. Most of what they do is secret, or can be claimed to be.

I asked, “Did your sister ever mention Sansom?”

He said, “I don’t think so.”

“Did she know him?”

“I can’t see how.”

I asked, “What did she do for a living?”

He wouldn’t tell me.